16-0 Georgetown run costs Asbury in second half

Asbury Head Coach Will Shouse said Tuesday that he had a plan for Thursday night’s game against the Tigers, and if his players stuck to that plan and made their shots, they had a chance to win. The Eagles executed the plan nearly to perfection, but the shots wouldn’t fall in Asbury’s 74-60 loss at #6 Georgetown.

The Tigers (4-1) used a big run in the second half to put away a game that the Eagles (4-2) never seemed to be out of. After a 3-pointer by John Ensign brought Asbury within three at 50-47, and Michael Spann missed what would have been a game-tying 3-pointer on the next possession, the Tigers rattled off 16 straight points to increase their lead to 19. Shouse attributed the outburst to a momentary lapse by his team that had battled so hard for the first 25 minutes.

“It’s a lack of concentration,” he said. “It takes so much effort for teams like us who are smaller, not as quick, not as athletic, to get stops. And then to have to work so hard on the offensive end throughout a whole 40-minute game is tough.”

Shouse gave his defense credit, however, for keeping Georgetown from scoring at will. Asbury held the Tigers to their lowest point total of the regular season (they were also held to 74 in the exhibition loss to the University of Louisiville). The game plan was to give up the 3-point shot in favor of collapsing in the post, exposing Georgetown’s biggest weakness.

“(The Tigers) are good at a lot of things, but they’re outside shooting numbers aren’t the best,” Shouse said. “So we tried to pack it in. We really tried to tell the guys ‘Don’t jump out at the shooters.’ We really want too close out, stay down. Because if you jump, one of the things they do best is go to the rim, break you down, and then it’s all of a sudden five on four.”

The strategy worked well for the Eagles, as Georgetown shot just 4-for-26 from the 3-point line and were constantly hounded in the post. Problem was, the shots weren’t falling for Asbury, either. The Eagles shot a season-low 29.9 percent from the field and made just nine of their 30 3-pointers, well short of Shouse’s goal of 15 made threes a game.

“It’s just tough when you’ve got long guys out there contesting your shots, and they’re like 6′5″, 6′6″ long guys,” said senior Michael Spann, who was 4-for-16 from the field and 1-for-6 from inside the 3-point line. “I thought overall, we got good shots. In the first half we were making them, and in the first part of the second half we were making them, but down the stretch we kind of went cold, and they went on that run.”

Phillip Morrison led the Eagles with 14 points, but he struggled with his shot as well, making just five of 19. Spann scored 13, and Cory Britt added 11. Brian Johnson pulled down a team-high nine rebounds, but he was just 1-for-6 with four points.

What the Eagles did take away was that they didn’t have their best game and still competed with the #6 team in the country on its own floor. After going down by 19, Asbury battled back to an eight-point deficit with just over three minutes left before the Tigers put it away for good.

“In the back of my mind, I knew we could win, but toward the end of the second half, it was an eight-point game, I really started believing,” Spann said. “I was like ‘Wow, we can compete with a team like this. We can have a chance to win.’ So I think going into conference play, we can beat anybody.”

“I’m pleased with it,” Shouse said of his team’s play. “This is the place that I want to see Asbury at someday, and to see that I don’t think we played our best, out of our minds, but decently close, and I think there are some good signs here for the future.”

Note: Being the shoddy journalist that I am, I left my camera sitting by the front door last night. So no pictures today, and no pictures in the Journal next week. You get what you pay for, folks.