By Alden Detmer
The George Washington men’s basketball team (16-13) dropped a heartbreaker 66-68 to Dayton (20-9) Friday night in front of a boisterous home crowd and national TV audience.
The loss for the Revolutionaires encapsulates a struggle they’ve held all season long: finding themselves in unlucky late-game situations despite exhibiting one of the best offenses in recent years. GW ranks dead last out of 365 teams in the Ken Pomeroy “Luck Rating.”
“We’ve found a lot of difficult ways to lose this season,” GW men’s basketball coach Chris Caputo said. “This is on a high level of hard to deal with. Realistically, there’s a gap between what we need to do to win these games and what we’ve been doing.”
Garrett Johnson posturizes defender (Photo by Greg Fiume)
After commanding the second half, the Revolutionaries seized the lead 66-64 when Tyrone Marshall Jr. drove baseline and laid it in with 43 seconds left.
Dayton, scoreless for over two minutes, couldn’t respond despite repeated timeouts. Dayton’s Javon Bennett managed to draw a foul but missed the second free throw, forcing Amael L’Etang to intentionally foul Rafael Castro, who missed both free throws.
Down one, L’Etang drove the court and made both free throw attempts off a foul from Luke Hunger. GW was unable to find their way to the basket on the last play.
“We just gotta keep working,” said Trey Autry, who finished with 15 points and seven rebounds.
“You love to be in these situations, but you also wanna be able to take care of business. The more and more we get in these situations, I gain more faith that we can figure it out and get over the hump.”
Before tying up the game, the Revolutionaires started out cold, only scoring five points in the first 10 minutes. However, GW managed to clamp down defensively and then the buckets started falling. The Revs were only down by three at halftime despite being down 16-3 at one point.
Rafael Castro returned to the lineup for the first time at home since obtaining a foot injury in practice shortly after playing Saint Louis Jan. 27.
“His work speaks for himself,” Autry said. “What he did last year, what he did this year before he got injured. Teams can’t play him one on one, so if they’re putting two [players] on the ball, we’ll have a lot of weapons. Having him in there is definitely something that’s game changing.”
The game was dubbed “Blue Out” as GW’s third all-time leading scorer Mike Brown, nicknamed “The New Washington Monument,” was honored with his jersey retired in the rafters.
“The Smith Center can be that way every time we play,” Caputo said of the crowd. “It’s a real environment, and I’m sure it jumped on TV. One of my goals is to try to get to this point all the time. You can’t come to this arena and not be like, ‘Man, that was cool, fun and high level.”
GW will host St. Bonaventure on Wednesday at 7 p.m. for their final A-10 conference game of the season.
