Three Points: WVU at DePaul
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I. Draelon Burns: It doesn’t matter who you play or what the circumstances, if you give up 31 points to a player like WVU did tonight with Burns something is wrong. But Burns had a pretty amazing performance after scoring no points in almost the entire first half to end with 31. The game was basically out of hand when Burns did most of his damage, with DePaul only drawing within 5 once in the second half, but he was nailing jumpers and hitting threes off the dribble with a defender in his face. He is not a guy you hear much about on the Big East scene but he is averaging about 17 points a game. I think DePaul gets lost in the shuffle in Big East because they’re not on the east coast and they aren’t as competitive as the other midwestern teams like Marquette, Notre Dame and Louisville.
II. Foul shooting: It was great to see this bug bite somebody else as the Blue Demons were 14-of-33 from the line, including a 0-for-7 performance from freshman forward Mac Koshwal. Koshwal had a chance to be a machine for DePaul tonight. I know he grabbed a ton of rebounds but with that bad performance from the line, he was reminding more of Shaq than Mac. Meanwhile WVU was a pedestrian 20-of-26 from the charity stripe.
III. Joe Alexander: Alexander had a nice strong start to the game which seems to be a key ingredient for the team to draw confidence from. He hit a couple open jumpers to start out then we also got Alex Ruoff involved with a nice three early on. If those shots don’t fall it simply changes the whole complexion of any game. I still don’t like how much foul trouble Alexander and Wellington Smith and some of our other guys got into. I think looking into the UConn game that could really hurt us. So let’s rejoice at a Big East road win which is a solid victory. Now we need to have a good showing in the Nutmeg State on Saturday.
Tags: Joe Alexander, foul shooting, DePaul, Draelon Burns, Mac Koshwal
