Colonials will take Metro to game against Rams Mike Lonergan doesn’t know whether telling everyone that he and the George Washington basketball team were going to travel by Metro to the BB&T Classic was a good idea. It certainly wasn’t a stunt but more of a manifestation of the frugal ways of someone who coached at humble Catholic for 12 years.
Meanwhile, the coach’s new employer has gone ahead and invited students to join the Colonials for the trip to Verizon Center, where they’ll face a VCU team coming off a Final Four appearance last spring.
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“I didn’t really want it to be a big publicity thing,” Lonergan said. “It was kind of a waste to have a bus come and get us to drive us across town, and maybe it’s the Division III in me. I don’t like to waste money sometimes.”
But Lonergan readily admits that it is another selling point for George Washington, one of many that he’s focused on his first season in Foggy Bottom, which has been as much about setting himself up for remolding the program in years to come as it has been managing and getting the most of a group that isn’t exactly his.
The Colonials (4-2) had a three-game win streak snapped at Kansas State on Thursday. They controlled the tempo and stayed in contention for 20 minutes against the Wildcats before falling apart in the second half (missing 10 of 11 3-pointers). Outside of point guard Tony Taylor’s 14 points, George Washington struggled on offense.
While junior forward Dwayne Smith (concussion) has slowly reintegrated with the team, Lonergan’s best progress has come in the growth of redshirt senior forward Jabari Edwards (6.2 points, 4.7 rebounds per game). But he’s repeatedly lamented a dearth of players too focused on offense and unwilling to play at both ends of the floor when shots aren’t falling.
“We’ve just got to get more consistency and more production from some of our guys who are playing a lot of minutes and not giving us a lot of production,” Lonergan said.
Bradford Burgess (12.7 ppg, 4.1 rpg) is the only one of last year’s top five scorers that has returned this year for the Rams (4-3), whose only losses have come against major conference teams (Seton Hall, Georgia Tech and Alabama).
