Men’s basketball (5-0) defeated University of Maryland Baltimore County (3-2) 89-52 Wednesday night in the Smith Center, marking the team’s fifth consecutive victory.

The Revolutionaries’ offensive success was fueled by the team’s 50 percent from the field and 7-13 from 3-point range. This allowed them to control the pace of the game from the start, never once letting UMBC take the lead. 

Head Coach Chris Caputo said he thought the team did well adjusting to and sticking with the opposing team, particularly on defense.

“They were prepared,” Caputo said postgame. “Our defense in the first half was very, very good and led to some good offense eventually after the first few minutes and a pretty complete game.”

GW remained strong on both sides of the ball throughout the game, emphasizing the benefits of their democratic offense and utilizing a 7-man rotation, an overall highlight of their strong defense. 

The story of the game for the Revs was the tandem of redshirt senior forward Rafael Castro and graduate forward Luke Hunger. The duo both recorded double-doubles, with Castro notching 13 points and 15 rebounds and Hunger adding 13 and 10.

When asked about the connection between the Revs’ two bigs, Hunger said having two powerful forwards who can work around the rim will help the Revs find success.

“The fact that we have two guys that can just come in and play solid minutes and be anchors for the teams, I think that’s really important, especially when we get into conference play, and there’s a lot of teams with bigs,” Hunger said.

When asked post-game if the tandem of Castro and Hunger would ever be utilized on the court at the same time, Caputo said he’s interested in the potential but Wednesday’s game against UMBC was not the right matchup because the Retrievers didn’t have multiple bigs to be played against.

“There might be opportunities to play them together at some point, you know, we’ll have to look at it. Yeah, we have looked at it. Just some of these games here, and even South Florida plays a little bit smaller, there’s not as many teams that play quite as big that we’ve played yet, but we could see that some point. But they’re both those guys been great,” Caputo said.

Redshirt junior Garrett Johnson was the top scorer in tonight’s matchup, finishing with 16 points and shooting 60.0 percent from three-point territory. This marks his third straight game as a top scorer for the team, after putting up 17 against Old Dominion University in the Revs’ last game.

“I think we have a good team without him, right? But certainly, our ceiling gets raised tremendously when you have a guy like that, I mean, he came back, and he’s been our leading scorer,” Caputo said.

Late in the first half, Johnson was noticeably hunched over with a hand on the floor. He walked off with trainers at the 2:00 remaining mark, appearing to deal with stomach discomfort. He was cleared at halftime and returned for the second half. Postgame, Caputo said it was “just a gut punch,” that knocked the wind out of him.

Another standout included sophomore guard Christian Jones, who was alongside Castro and Johnson as one of the Revs’ top scorers in tonight’s game. Jones also added one assist and two rebounds.

Caputo said the Revs’ maturity across the board has helped both veterans and newcomers alike to commit to the hard-playing game strategy.

“It’s been ingrained in the culture that we’re gonna play really, really hard. We’re gonna play with great pace,” Caputo said

The Revs entered halftime with a solid 47-17 lead. The Retrievers attempted to close the 30-point gap, scoring 35 points in the second half. However, a crowd-stirring dunk by Hunger disrupted the Retrievers’ much-needed momentum.

“Just playing as hard as I can, not worrying about stats, just wins. We’re playing as a team and we have to keep that up if we want to be good this year,” Hunger said. 

The matchup between UMBC and GW was the first since 2020, when the Retrievers won 92-81. This win bodes well for the upcoming matches in the Cayman Islands Classic, where the focus will be on aiming for quadrant one and two games while playing more out-of-conference teams.

The Revs will next play McNeese State University (3-1) Sunday at 5 p.m. — their first game of three in the Cayman Islands Classic, held in the U.S. Virgin Islands.