(Photo courtesy of Hunter Hensel)
BROOKLYN, NY – Despite exceeding expectations by almost every metric in head coach Tony Skinn’s first season, beating then-No. 16 Dayton at home and earning a very respectable No. 8 seed in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, a different storyline hijacked the end of George Mason’s season.
Instead of celebrating the successful start of a new era of George Mason basketball, the circumstances surrounding sophomore forward Keyshawn Hall’s ankle injury dominated headlines. The All-Conference second teamer missed the final three games of the season, and despite Skinn confirming that he was available for their second round tournament game against No. 9 seed Saint Joseph’s, Hall only played for four minutes in the first half.
In those four minutes, Hall went 0-3 from the field. Skinn never looked Hall’s way for the rest of the game, even when George Mason was attempting a furious second half comeback, coming back from being down by as many as 18 points to make it a three point game with 1:25 left in the game with a chance to tie.
“[Hall] did practice a couple of days in a row. But this time of the year, we’re not really going that hard. So he’s been dealing with that, and we were going to use him as fit today,” said Skinn. “Obviously, for the most part, it was a rhythm game. I thought that Woody Newton has been playing exceptionally well the last couple of games, so I didn’t want to throw that off. I just thought that tonight, when he was in, he didn’t do anything wrong. But just from a rhythm standpoint, it just wasn’t there.”
Skinn then confirmed that Hall did not re-aggravate his ankle injury during his four minutes on the court and that he was available to return after he was benched for good with 9:38 left in the first half.
George Mason ended up losing 57-64 to Saint Joseph’s, failing to advance to the quarterfinals of the A-10 Tournament.
A George Mason spokesperson said that Hall was unavailable for comment after their second round loss and that he had already made his way to the bus by the time the postgame press conference concluded.
Hall led the A-10 in rebounding with 8.4 per game, was fourth in scoring with 17.2 points and shot 35.7% from three.
The first game that Hall missed due to what Skinn described as a “tough ankle sprain” was on March 2 against Duquesne. The Dukes beat George Mason 59-51 at EagleBank Arena, and after the game, Skinn was asked about whether or not he could get some traction at that point in the season. Here’s what he had to say according to Patrick Stevens of the Washington Post:
Tony Skinn on whether Mason can get some traction at this point … pic.twitter.com/XuOttTxI3N
— Patrick Stevens (@D1scourse) March 2, 2024
“I hope so. I will be realistic, though. It’s March 2nd, and the nature of the beast is portal time is coming,” said Skinn. “When you’re dealing with that, you can humanly try to put together a locker room that still has to fight. We’re trying to stay away from playing on Tuesday [in the A-10 tournament.] But when you add that portal combination with NIL, it’s tough.”
Skinn continued, “when you start losing some bodies and you start throwing some of the other variables in there–I’m going to coach my ass off for the next two weeks, but it’s a variable that exists.”
After that, speculation on Twitter and other parts of the online college basketball world began to circulate as to why Hall was really out.
Check around, Jon. Hall has been poached and is sitting out, per his new NIL deal. The glories of “player empowerment”! Quitting on his school, teammates, coaches, and fans during the season. EXPOSE THIS STUFF! Be a journalist!
— Sausage Sassone (@SausageSassone) March 6, 2024
Rumors about Hall supposedly “quitting” on George Mason in order to stay healthy and save himself for the transfer portal became so pervasive that he released a statement on his own Twitter account claiming that he was still “locked in” with George Mason and that he was just focusing on returning to the A-10 Tournament.
Anything anyone heard is not true still locked in with Mason💚💛 if you know me you know I never quit or just sat out of any game I always want to play! just getting treatment on my ankle so I can be Good for A10 tournament🙏🏽. https://t.co/502OoHDcgr
— xkeyy (@xkeyy2) March 6, 2024
Technically, Hall did return for the A-10 tournament. But, something felt off. If he was deemed healthy enough to play those four minutes in the first half, why wouldn’t Skinn have had a little more faith in his best scorer, especially when Mason just needed to get some points on the board down big in the second half?
Before finding his way to George Mason, Hall spent his freshman season at UNLV. Hall struggled with weight, weighing-in as high as 295 during his senior year of high school. He dropped down to 225 by the time he was able to get on the court at UNLV, but he struggled to get consistent minutes.
Hall only played in 18 games for the Runnin’ Rebels, averaging 5.4 points per game, 1.6 rebounds and 0.4 assists in 10.7 minutes.
Once the season was over, Hall entered the transfer portal, and found his way to George Mason. Skinn, who was forced to rebuild after former head coach Kim English took a job at Providence and brought former Patriots Josh Oduro, Ticket Gaines and Justyn Fernandez with him, had seen Hall play in the summer of 2021 in Ohio when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State.
Hall committed to George Mason in April.
Bet On YourSelf let’s Rock Mason Nation💚💛
Shock the world! @CoachTonySkinn @MasonMBB pic.twitter.com/EYDPlIbMgV
— xkeyy (@xkeyy2) April 22, 2023
At the time of Hall’s commitment, it was NCAA policy that in most circumstances, two-time transfers would have to sit out a season, meaning Hall would likely finish out his collegiate (or at least his undergraduate) career at George Mason.
However, this past December, a federal judge ruled that student-athletes who were sitting out due to the two-time transfer regulations were immediately eligible to play. It is unclear whether or not student-athletes who transfer for a second time will be eligible for the 2024-25 season, but most in the industry are acting under the assumption that they will be.
Skinn’s comments on March 2 confirmed that belief.
“I’m pretty sure they’re going to pass the two-time transfer,” said Skinn. “I got a little birdie that told me that.”
This upcoming offseason was further complicated after another federal ruling lessened the NCAA’s ability to regulate how student-athletes are able to earn deals off of their name, image and likeness (NIL).
These two rulings would hypothetically give Hall the ability to transfer to a high-major school with a significantly larger NIL collective, capitalize on the lack of NIL regulations and be able to immediately play without sitting out a season despite having already transferred.
George Washington head coach Chris Caputo spoke to A10Talk before the A-10 Tournament about Skinn’s comments on March 2nd and how the transfer and NIL rulings have impacted college basketball.
“With the way the goalposts moved in the middle of the season… the NCAA, the courts and the attorney generals have created a very destabilized environment in college basketball,” said Caputo. “The difficulty is when you get young people who don’t have a ton of life experience in an environment where they’re being told if something doesn’t go their way, they can always leave, and you add in the financial part to that, it’s going to probably cause some bad decisions, certainly going to cause some moments that take away from the group or even take away from that player’s development.”
Caputo continued, “If a guy in his mind is thinking, ‘I’m out of here in two weeks,’ because their people are talking to them, I can see there being frustration with that. You can’t control that if you’re a coach, that’s the environment that’s been created.”
The college basketball transfer portal officially opens on Monday, March 18. Based on Skinn’s comments and Hall being benched in George Mason’s second round A-10 tournament loss, it seems like an inevitability that Hall’s name will be one of the first to officially enter the portal.
If that happens, expect a long list of elite programs with significant NIL opportunities to be in the running for Hall’s services.
Liam O’Murchu and Nick Perkins of WRGW Sports contributed to the reporting of this story.
https://www.a10talk.com/2024/03/what-we-know-about-the-confusing-end-to-keyshawn-halls-season/
#A10Tournament #ChrisCaputo #featured #GeorgeMason #GeorgeMasonPatriots #KeyshawnHall #NIL #patriots #TonySkinn #transferPortal
(Photo courtesy of Hunter Hensel)
BROOKLYN NY – No. 15 seed George Washington lost in heartbreaking fashion to No. 10 La Salle in the opening round of the Atlantic 10 Tournament.
Down 60-61, senior guard James Bishop missed a fadeaway midrange jumper, then missed a deep contested three after redshirt freshman forward Darren Buchanan Jr. grabbed the offensive rebound off of Bishop’s first miss.
Heartbreak.
GW: 60, La Salle: 61 pic.twitter.com/IMmzgM9ocV
— David Korn (@david_korn4) March 12, 2024
“The first shot, I’m just trying to get space to get open to shoot. The second one, the ball kind of rolled to me,” said Bishop. “I saw the clock was up to 2.1 seconds, so I was trying to get a look off. Had a pretty clean one, just didn’t go in.”
Bishop scored a team-high 19 points on 4-8 shooting from three, but was much more inefficient inside the arc, going 1-10 on two-point field goals.
On the previous play, Senior guard Jhamir Brickus made what would end up being the game-winning basket on a turnaround midrange jumper just outside the paint. Brickus also drew a foul on the make, but was unable to convert the and-one.
JHAMIR BRICKS AND 1 FOR THE LEAD 😱 pic.twitter.com/ObOslV8gIK
— Michael Bergman (@MLBergman_) March 12, 2024
“I wasn’t ready to go home,” said Brickus. “In that moment, I was just trying to do anything that I could do for my team to win.
Brickus was exceptional for the Explorers all game. He scored a game-high 21 points, grabbed eight rebounds, dished out three assists and shot an efficient 9-16 from the field and 3-5 from three.
After giving up the first two points of the game, GW led for the entire first half, going up by as much as nine. However, despite holding their lead, the Revolutionaries had a difficult time generating any real offense outside of the occasional free throw. In the first half, there was a 6:27 stretch where GW did not register a field goal, but was able to keep their lead due to a much-improved defensive effort.
The second half was much more back-and-forth after La Salle was able to make some key halftime adjustments.
“We double-teamed three different times and it cost us dearly,” said La Salle head coach Fran Dunphy. “We eliminated that in the second half… and we just walled up and tried to make [Babatunde Akingbola] shoot up and over the top of us.”
GW once again found themselves struggling to score, but was able to get it going with about nine minutes left in the game after La Salle had taken a five point lead when redshirt sophomore guard Maximus Edwards was able to score five straight points in his new role as sixth man.
Edwards ended the game with 10 points and nine rebounds.
Buchanan, who scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half also began to take on more of the scoring load in crunch-time. He was attacking the basket, getting to the free throw line and made a clutch corner three with just under two minutes to go to give GW a 60-59 lead, their final lead of the game.
One of the bright spots of GW’s season was Buchanan. as a redshirt freshman, he averaged 15.7 points per game, 6.6 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.3 blocks on 54.9% shooting. Buchanan also acted as GW’s primary ball-handler for large stretches of time, allowing Bishop to operate off-ball as a pure scorer.
Just hours before the game, Buchanan learned that he lost out on A-10 Rookie of the Year to Saint Joseph’s freshman guard Xzayvier Brown, who averaged 13.3 points per game, 3.8 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.9 steals and shot 43.2% from three.
“I don’t pay too much attention to that stuff, honestly. Hats off to the kid who won it. He had a good year,” said Buchanan. “I didn’t really care, honestly. I was more focused on the team and what we had at stake. That will always be my focus, the team. I couldn’t care less about my personal success.”
Buchanan’s three was the last basket GW would make all game.
“Disappointing ending to what’s been a very difficult year for us,” said GW head coach Chris Caputo.
Not only was this the final game of GW’s season, but it was the final game of Bishop’s collegiate career. Despite having one of most decorated in bodies of work in program history, Bishop was never able to find any real postseason success, going 1-4 in the A-10 tournament in his four seasons at GW.
His only win came in 2021, when as the No. 11 seed, GW was able to beat No. 14 Fordham in the first round before losing to No. 6 George Mason. In 2022 as the No. 7 seed, GW lost to No. 10 UMass in the second round. In 2023 once again as the No. 7 seed, GW lost to No. 10 Saint Joseph’s.
“I don’t think it’s clicked in yet, but I mean, Im just happy I was able to play for GW and help the program and be around this special group of guys this year,” said Bishop. “It didn’t necessarily go our way, but I love how we fought. I wouldn’t change the decision to come back for anything.”
“[Bishop] is a pleasure, really, to be around every day. So low maintenance, he’s so even-keeled. For me, he was really crutch as you’re trying to build a program,” said Caputo. “To have a guy that you know you can kind of lean on a little bit in certain situations was certainly a blessing.”
GW season, highlighted by a 12-game losing streak in conference play and a last-place finish was an overwhelming disappointment. After beginning the year 14-3, everything seemed to go wrong.
Redshirt freshman forward Garrett Johnson, who was averaging 13.4 points and 5.6 rebounds, ended up missing the final eight games after experiencing soreness and mobility issues in his left hip that stemmed from his rare benign tumor that caused him to be away from basketball for two-and-a-half years and undergo four different surgeries and nine rounds of chemotherapy.
Buchanan also dealt with injury issues, missing three games and playing through significant pain in a game in which Caputo later admitted he should sat out with a lower-body injury.
During the postgame press conference, Buchanan confirmed that he would be returning to GW next season.
“Disappointing year. That it. It was disappointing,” said Buchanan. “I’m just eager to come back next year and be back in this position here and just make sure everything is different.”
Just as GW finally appeared to be turning a corner after beating St. Bonaventure at home and narrowly losing to Duquesne on the road in their final two games, their season, and Bishop’s career, is over.
La Salle will face No. 7 seed St. Bonaventure on Wednesday 5:00 pm. The Explorers beat St. Bonaventure on Feb. 21 72-59, and has now won five of their last seven.
#A10 #A10 #A10Basketball #A10Talk #A10Tournament #Atlantic10 #Atlantic10Basketball #Blog #ChrisCaputo #DarrenBuchananJr_ #Explorers #featured #FranDunphy #GeorgeWashington #GeorgeWashingtonRevolutionaries #GW #JamesBishop #JhamirBrickus #LaSalle #LaSalleExplorers #Revolutionaries #tournament
David Grayless
David Korn
