Iona pulled out an overtime win at Denver on Wednesday night, 80-78. The dramatic win came from a Gaels team that played in a difficult environment against a talented team. Still, Tim Cluess’ team moves to 7-1 and (spoiler alert) will be No. 1 when the new New York City Power Poll comes out this afternoon. Here are three other thoughts from the game.
1. Mike Glover still needs more shots, but he’s got to stay on the court too — Foul trouble limited Glover to 24 minuts against Denver. He still managed to score 13 points, on 5-7 shooting, and grab six rebounds. He also had six turnovers. The Gaels keep adding weapons, but their senior big man was rightly recognized amongst the top players in all of college basketball in the preseason. He needs to work on staying out of foul trouble so that he can be on the court to use his ridiculous offensive skills around the basket.
2. Denver slowed things down, Iona still managed to pull it out — This entire game was played in 74 possessions, which means that if it ended in regulation it would’ve been about 66 possessions. Ironically, that nets out right in between Iona’s 72-possession per game pace and Denver’s 60-possession pace. Two teams with contrasting styles played and they compromised in a nice sort of way. The Gaels’ 1.08 points per possession was their lowest scoring output of the season.
3. Iona’s depth isn’t depth if it can’t play significant minutes against a key opponent — Denver was the third best opponent that Iona has played this season and Cluess shortened his bench significantly. Kyle Smyth (37 minutes), Scott Machado (39 minutes) and Lamont “Momo” Jones (40 minutes) all played a lot. Yes, there was five more minutes tacked onto the end of the game, but last night’s hero Randy Dezouvre and Jermel Jenkins were the only guys to come off the bench and play more than eight minutes. How much trust does Cluess have in guys like Sean Armand, Ra’Shad James and Nyandigisi Moikobu? Because at some point he’s going to need them.
Nonetheless this is a great win for Iona and now it’s onto a tough game in West Virginia this weekend when the Gaels take on Marshall on Sunday. The Thundering Herd are a talented team to be sure and should provide yet another excellent early-season challenge.
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Good win by the Gaels. The stuck with the pressure all night, and it finally began to fluster Denver in the final 5 minutes of regulation. It was one of those games where, even with a 5- or 7-point lead down the stretch, you could feel it slipping away from the Pioneers. DU made a few uncharacteristic unforced errors as well (throwing the ball away, stepping out of bounds, missing crucial free throws), but all credit to Iona for taking advantage of those miscues, and more broadly, for hanging tough and mounting a comeback after Denver had led most of the way. (In fact, think Iona’s first lead was in overtime, no?) It was a high-quality game between two good teams. I hope we’ll get to see them both still playing in mid-to-late March (and not in “ghost brackets”).
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Good analysis of the game. Nice to see that Gaels playing so well and have a tough road win like this. I hope they keep it up and maybe Dance more that just one song in March.
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