Despite 14 turnovers and an aggressive effort down low by their opponent, GW pulled off a 72-64 bounce-back win over Seton Hall at home Wednesday night with superior offensive efficiency.
Senior guard Joe McDonald and junior forward Tyler Cavanaugh co-lead GW on the night with 16 points each, while Cavanaugh added a team-high seven rebounds in the eight-point victory.
The matchup marked the second leg of a home-and-home agreement between the two programs, and served as a shot at redemption for the Colonials, who fell to the Pirates 58-54 in Newark last November and entered Wednesday’s game fresh off their first loss on the season.
“[This game] was just another opportunity for us to take advantage of being at home, personally I know I didn’t play my best game and I got in foul trouble last year, and I just wanted to make sure that I could contribute however I could,” McDonald said. “They had good guards and we had some breakdowns defensively but we made the plays that we needed.”
Seton Hall (5-2) dominated inside for most of the contest. The visitors outrebounded the Colonials (7-1) 38-32 and outscored them 40-24 in the paint, but GW’s 48.1 percent clip from the field, plus 17 points at the line generated by a more aggressive second-half effort, won the game.
In addition to textbook performances from two of its veterans, the Colonials got 21 points from its bench. Sophomore guard Paul Jorgensen, who converted a number of drives to the basket, led that effort with nine points while junior guard Matt Hart had six.
Early GW turnovers helped the visiting Pirates gain an edge out of the gate. Seton Hall led by as much as 17-11 in the first half after the Colonials gave the ball away four times in the opening ten minutes.
The Big East squad was also able to keep it close in the frame behind a strong rebounding performance. The Pirates won the battle on the glass 19-14 in the first half, as McDonald and sophomore forward Yuta Watanabe contributed three rebounds each in the frame.
Though the team had fewer, GW took advantage of its offensive chances better than Seton Hall in the first half. Before halftime, the Colonials shot an impressive 57.1 percent clip from the field (16-28) to the Pirates’ 41.2 (14-34).
GW would finish the frame with seven turnovers to Seton Hall’s six, but its offensive efficiency, guided by a team-best 11 first-half points from Cavanaugh, who hit two of GW’s five three-pointers on the night, and a final second bucket from Jorgensen gave the team a 37-33 lead at halftime.
“Guys found me in good spots where I could score where I was wide-open, we were making the extra pass very well,” Cavanaugh said. “So it’s all the credit to them and we’re a great team right now and anyone can step up on any given night so we’ve just got to keep rebounding well, they outrebounded us tonight, but we’ve just got to keep battling.”
Thirteen second-half points from McDonald, who dug deep into his bag of tricks to score nine points in a row with a series of drives to the rim, helped the Colonials keep pace as the Pirates continued to get penetration themselves.
“[In the second half] they kind of got out of that two-three matchup and they went like straight man and we talked about it with the coaches that they weren’t really strong on the ball-screen defense, so I think we took advantage of that, everyone did, getting to the paint and creating for others,” McDonald said.
While sophomore guard Khadeen Carrington managed a game-high 21 points by consistently breaking through a strong GW defense, the Colonials had an extra edge after sophomore guard Isaiah Whitehead found himself in foul trouble.
Whitehead, Seton Hall’s leading scorer who had a team-best 15 points against GW last year, was never able to find a rhythm after recording two fouls just six minutes into the game and his fourth with a little more than eight minutes to play.
Lonergan said the Colonials’ one-three-one defense, which helped GW hold Seton Hall to just 2-18 on the night and 0-10 in the second half from three-point range, was actually meant to take away drives.
“The only guy we wanted to guard, and take the ball out of was Whitehead’s hands because he’ll shoot from 30, but we continued to run out on Carrington and he just took us to the rim so that was the thing that was frustrating, we were supposed to be packed in,” Lonergan said. “Fortunately we scored enough to beat them.”
Senior forward Kevin Larsen had a team-high four assists and added four rebounds, but was good for two points or fewer for the second game in a row.
The Colonials return to action Tuesday when they play host to Penn State at 7 p.m.
