Before Tuesday’s men’s basketball game Saturday against FDU-Florham, one could question how Stevenson would respond following their only loss to date in a thrilling overtime battle 11 days earlier on the road at Eastern Mennonite University. Slowly but surely, the audience and the team themselves found a promising answer.
Stevenson won 85-71 against a solid FDU-Florham squad to continue a great start to the season. The Mustangs are 6-1 overall with Mid-Altantic Conference play still a month away.
But the victory didn’t come without some struggles and adversity, as basketball is a game of runs.
Fourth-year guard Kendall Seguignol followed up his MAC Player of the Week honor with a 10-point, 8-rebound game to lead the glass control for the squad, who also shot a scorching-hot 66.7% inside the 3-point line to exert full attention on drives for mid-range shots and into the restricted area in time.
The very start of the game looked bleak for the squad, as they seemed to carry some of their drought in the previous game into the early stages.
“There was definitely a little bit of rust, we hadn’t played a game in a little while,” head coach Jack Bors said after the game.
On the one end, the halfcourt offense was lackluster with some turnovers and stagnant execution off sets. On the other end, the on-ball defense was somewhat fine but compounded with other lapses on rotations, culminating in a 16-5 run for the visitors to open the game.
After a blitz of that proportion, any shift in momentum became critical. This game was defined by the Mustangs matching the physicality despite the disadvantage in size, and this happened as soon as third-year guard Christian Jackson entered the game. They started to string together a few buckets at a time, but his propensity to enter the lane with speed and convert on tough drives with scores, looks or drawn fouls instilled a fire in the team.
“I was just trying to do anything to help our team win. That’s projecting energy onto the guys, assisting, points, defense, any way….that was my main objective,” Jackson said.
They didn’t always come easy, and he took a few good licks from oncoming defenders on some occasions. Regardless, he was unphased in his effort to make FDU-Florham feel his full presence on the court.
The game remained close for most of the rest of the first half, yet, the team had some life. They had a 10-2 run later in this period, making the margin heading into halftime relatively slim. However, they had commanded that respect from the defense of the opponent to account for these slashes to the rim. They could no longer scare off this hungry team from desiring to get theirs at the cup, and everything else opened up from there.
A barrage of tough shots marked the beginning of the second half, even a four-point play for one of the FDU-Florham wings. However, things reached a head for the unit at large, as they got
high-percentage looks out in space and stayed home on defense to affect numerous close shots. The paint work paid off, and a few isolation looks picked up from time to time.
All of that concentration on the offensive side worked within the flow of the game for the Mustangs at this point.
“We shared the ball a lot. I feel like that spread out the [FDU] defense. The defensive intensity [as well], it was just harder for them to run whatever they wanted to. Even when they made shots, I believe it was a hard shot for them,” Jackson said after the game.
Every starter for Stevenson in the game logged at least double digits in points en route to a season-high output in team scoring. Notably, sophomore guard Noah Ihezue followed up a scoreless outing with a team-high 17 points (all in the second half) to vault the team to this resurgence down the stretch.
Other metrics showcased this to be a much closer game than it was, but the Mustangs had a 16-5 run of their own with a flurry of points from Ihezue to open the lead up to greater than double digits for the remainder of the action.
There was a tremendous overall effort by the squad in the bounce-back effort to overcome these discrepancies. They will look to keep their momentum rolling in the next game on Dec. 16 against Wilson College at 7:00 p.m. in the Owings Mills Gymnasium.
