ECU won a game they could have easily lost today thanks to another Javon Small gem. 21 points, 10 assists, 5 rebounds, 3 steals and he did it all on 8 shots from the floor. He continues to be the story of the year. Without this nearly unprecedented ascent, I don't know if this team would have had 3 wins.
It's a very good win anytime you can win a game shooting 22.2% from three while the other team shoots 47.4% on a similar solid volume. Even though Sessoms had 22 points and 5 assists I thought ECU did about as good of a job as you could expect. He only got off 5 three-point attempts and to the line 3 times. Those 22 points came on mostly hard acrobatic twos around the rim.
ECU overcame the poor three-point shooting by dominating the paint. ECU has caught fortunate breaks all season with many of these teams missing some of their best players and tonight Coppin State was without senior Justin Winston, who is their best big man at 6-8, 225. He was a starter in the A10 as a freshman for a top 120 team and would have probably helped stifle some of those points in the paint, at least some with the extra 25 points and inch plus he had on most of the guys they played in the post.
Overall the rotations were more in line with what they needed to be if you want to win nip and tuck games with Small, Johnson and Felton all playing 36+ minutes a game. If ECU wants any chance Small and Johnson need to play high minutes like this IMO. I think Ausar would have played more than 24 minutes if he could have stopped fouling too. That seems like its going to be more his issues. At least he didn't go home with a foul in his pocket. Let him foul out playing and get what you can out of him.
Walker got 26 minutes and is earning more time. Doghouse Diboundje continues to get a handful of minutes. Seven minutes in this game. but he still continues to be productive in what scraps he can get, and got 6 points on 2 shots from the floor. Bayela had his best game on the season, but it still was still pretty meh. His +/- was high but a lot of that was as a result of playing with Ausar most of his minutes. He wasn't terrible but I continue to wonder why he is elevated to as featured a role with guys like Diboundje and Walker earning more time doing similar things better. This is deep in the season at this point.
ECU played 11 guys but LaCount, Sunderland, Debaut, and Pinedo combined for 14 minutes (21 with Diboundje). That's fine, I don't mind if you split that 8th man section minutes up This was the closest thing to a 7-man rotation ECU has had all season. All in all not bad. the rotations were better I thought. Just flip Diboundje and Bayela's roles and you would be close to ideal. It's just tough to continue seeing guys like Sessoms that you knew were out there in the portal that could have helped this team.
