Harding blows out Ecclesia heading into the break

This one probably wasn’t expected to be close, so it’s good to see the Bisons play another efficient game and get their record over .500 (now 6-5).

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With the defense focused squarely on Matt Hall, the other Bisons did a great job taking (and making) good shots.  Hall had 20 points, but it took him 16 shots to get them, which is not the otherworldly level of performance we’re used to seeing from the Harding forward.  Luckily, Trent Morgan, Chris Dixon, and Kevin Brown picked up the scoring slack.  All three ended up in double digits: Dixon with 18, Brown with 16 (so far a career high), and Morgan with 11.

Free throw shooting was a problem, though, in an otherwise efficient shooting game.  Jacob Thies was just 1-for7 at the line, which is totally unacceptable, no matter what your role is.  Jesse Bynum was nowhere to be found (injury, or just to give Brown/Howard some PT?), so Thies played 19 minutes.  The rest of the team was 12-for-19, which still isn’t anything to write home about.   The Bisons, fortunately, were simply more talented in other areas of the game.  When you’re able to take almost 80% of your shots from inside the arc, you’re probably exploiting some kind of athletic advantage.  The huge disparities in turnover and rebound rate also confirm that theory.

The Bisons will take a break for the holidays and start the new year on the road at North Alabama and Alabama-Huntsville.  I’m currently planning on making the trip for the UAH game, as I have for the past two years.  While that one looks like a tough matchup, I’ll try to remain optimistic.

I said earlier this week that I was working on individual stats, and I am.  However, I’ve noticed a bug in some of the team stat calculations.  It’s related to the offensive rebounding percentages, so it’s possible that some of the strange numbers we noticed earlier this season were inflated because of the bug.  We’ll see.