Wednesday, December 5, 2012

TCNJ men see home woes continue


By GEORGE O’GORMAN
gogorman@trentonian.com

EWING — Who could blame Kelly Williams if he tried to get some of his upcoming home games moved out of Packer Hall?

The way his College of New Jersey Lions are playing — and shooting the ball at home — visiting teams seem to have an advantage playing inside the TCNJ gym.

At least Rutgers-Camden did on Wednesday, when it took advantage of a 7-minute second-half stretch when the Lions didn’t hit a field goal, and came away with a 68-63 N.J. Athletic Conference win — the third straight home loss for Williams’ 2-5 Lions.

The Lions don’t have to look deep on the stat sheet to find out why they remained winless at home and fell to 1-3 in the NJAC. They shot 18 for 60 overall, including 8 for 23 from  3-point range.

After Matt Rista’s 3-pointer gave TCNJ a 31-30 lead 42 seconds into the second half the Lions didn’t get another field goal until Mitch Miller converted a back-door layup at 12:15. That’s seven minutes without a field goal, which allowed Rutgers-Camden team to go up 47-40, a lead that was eventually cut to 66-63 in the final minute before the Lions’ comeback hopes were ended by three late RC free throws.

“With a young team you don’t know what you’re going to get game in and game out, and even from possession to possession,” said Williams. “I thought we had good looks, and the reality is you have to be able to knock down good shots, and we didn’t.

“We didn’t shoot well tonight and had a couple of missed defensive assignments that eventually came back to haunt us.

“But the reality is we just haven’t shot the ball well at home, unfortunately. It was 18 for 60, and a lot of them were clean looks. Hopefully we’ll keep getting the clean looks, and they’ll start going in,” said Williams.

The Lions shot a shade better in the second half (10-for-33), but RC was 15 for 24 from the floor at he same time, which helped them survive. Alex Fox led three Lions in double figures with 11 despite shooting 3 for 11, while Jayson Johnson added 10 on 4 for 15 shooting. The only double-figure scorer who shot well was Zach Friedrich, who drained both of his 3-pointers to finish with 10.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home