Saturday’s men’s basketball exhibition game against Division II West Georgia was just that – an exhibition.
It was an exhibition of a team hustling, playing together and exerting its will on the opposition. But it was also an exhibition of a successful Division I program beating up on a smaller, weaker and less-skilled group, the likes of which the Colonials won’t see again this year.
Compared to last year’s exhibition, when GW needed overtime to beat Division II UDC, the game was a rousing success. But GW fans may be better off not comparing things to last season, the team’s worst in Karl Hobbs’s eight-year tenure.
Still, a 30-point win is a 30-point win and those don’t come easily no matter who the competition is. Now it’s important that GW not get overconfident about their abilities based on their performance Saturday. Head coach Karl Hobbs, who is to optimism what Kurt Cobain was to ’80s hair bands, is even saying good things about his team. Throughout the past few weeks, he has been hinting toward having a better team than the 11th place finish the league’s coaches predicted. After Saturday’s game, he was in good spirits.
“As a basketball coach, at this early stage of the game, you feel you have to work on everything,” he said. “But the one thing is, it looks like we’re athletic, it looks like we’re fast, it looks like we’re back to having pretty good depth. So I was very pleased in that regard.”
It’s not difficult to see why the team and its coach is optimistic. GW’s presumed starting five (Travis King, Xavier Alexander, Wynton Witherspoon, Damian Hollis and Robert Diggs) are not only very talented, but also strikingly well-rounded.
King, who will be eased back into the team as the season progresses according to head coach Karl Hobbs, is an unselfish point guard who can hit a jumper. Alexander shined in the exhibition, making his usual impact on defense but also looking much more comfortable offensively and around the basket and at the free throw line. Witherspoon is a high-flyer whose mid-range game is exceptional. The 6-foot-8, sweet-shooting Hollis is a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses if he is on his game. And Diggs is the best player on the team.
Perhaps most important is that this team appears to actually like each other. High-fives last year seemed forced, sometimes even awkward. Diggs, a senior, said that last year’s team was bogged down by players who had other focuses besides winning. One can only assume he was referring to Maureece Rice and Miles Beatty, both of whom were suspended during the season and are not back this year (Rice was a senior; Beatty’s scholarship wasn’t renewed).
So things seem to be pointed in the right direction for this team that had no where to go but up. They open the season Nov. 14 against Boston University, a team the Colonials play frequently and rarely lose to. Still, for the second year in a row, the Terriers were predicted to win the America East conference by the league’s conference.
If the Colonials stroll into Agganis Arena Friday thinking the game will be a cake walk, they may find themselves quickly humbled. After all, even last year’s team won its first game.
