Written by Tim Hofstaetter
Roanoke College Men’s basketball is back and off to a fun start! They have played two games to start their season off, so far. These games were played on the 10th and the 11th of November. These outcomes of these games give the team a 1-1 start. The men’s team took a trip up to Chester, Pennsylvania for these two games.
Roanoke opened the season with a win against Stockton University, where they won 85-74 and dominated the second half out scoring Stockton by 10 points that half. The major story of this game is senior Justin Kuthan scoring a career high 32 points on a fantastic 83% from the court and making 11 of 15 free throws. Kuthan that night was unguardable and he knew it, taking it to the rim with ease and had a few “and ones” to prove it. Another big storyline was our great team basketball and stout defense, we had 4 maroons with double digit points and held Stockton to having just two people score more than 10 points. Our defense is what solidified this game as a win, Roanoke forced 16 turnovers and forced Stockton to shoot 16% from the three-point line, this game.
The game on Saturday had just as many bright spots despite the loss to Widener. This game was another great example of team basketball, the maroons had 5 double digit scorers. Additionally, of the 10 people that checked in, 8 scored. Roanoke also played good clean defense this game as Widener only shot 8 free throws the entire game compared to the Roanoke 29 free throws. However, in this game Roanoke did not win the turnover battle and only forced 8 turnovers this game, this is a very small sample size but if Roanoke can continue to force turnovers with our ball pressure and rotations this team’s defense can be scarily good. Roanoke already has one of the best defenders in the entire ODAC. Junior, Joshua McClary, tallied one block and one steal in this game. Along with being a spearhead for the Roanoke defense McClary has been helping lead the offense by leading Roanoke in assists to start the year.
With Roanoke’s start so far, I think there is a lot of potential for a very fun and very good season this year from Roanoke despite losing arguably one of our best players last year, Kasey Draper. I personally cannot wait for more Roanoke basketball this year and will be making sure to support both our men’s and women’s team this upcoming weekend when both teams have home games!
