The first time Holy Cross and Bucknell met up this year, the Crusaders won 65-60 on Jan. 12. The second time, in Lewisburg, the Bison pulled out a 48-45 victory. The stars of the combined two games were Keith Simmons, who scored 37 points in the two contests, and Justin Castleberry, who scored 26 points coming off the bench in both games.

In the first tango, up in Worcester, the Crusaders streaked out to an early 8-1 lead, and led by at least two possessions until less than 2 minutes remained in the game. Holy Cross did it by taking Bucknell out of their offensive game. The Bison only shot 14 free throw attempts, well below their season average of 20.2. Though Bucknell’s smaller lineup (three guards, along with Donald Brown and Chris McNaughton) seemed to be working well in December and January, it actually played right into the hands of Holy Cross’s hybrid zone defense. It allowed the coach Ralph Willard to throw Tim Clifford, Eric Meister and Alex Vander Baan at McNaughton, while keying Simmons, a top-notch defensive player, on Brown. Simmons constantly denied entry passes to Brown. As a result, more than half of Bucknell’s shots came from John Griffin, Jason Vegotsky and Castleberry, and many of them came late in the shot clock after Bucknell could not penetrate the defense. Eventually, Castleberry and Griffin shot the Bison back into the game very late, but that’s exactly the point: Holy Cross was able to cut off Bucknell’s strength, and force them to rely on something they usually consider a tertiary option.

The ending of the game was certainly cause for concern for the Crusaders. After opening a 13-point lead with 6:40 to go in the game, Holy Cross watched Bucknell make a 14-2 run to come within 1 point with 57 seconds to go. The Crusaders were able to escape, thanks largely to Abe Badmus missing the front end of a one-and-one with 10 seconds left and the Bison trailing by 3. But Holy Cross had 5 turnovers in the final 6 minutes of the game, as well as several missed shots that came very late in the shot clock. More importantly, during the 14-2 run, Simmons only attempted one shot for the Crusaders. This has been an occasional problem this year; for one reason or another, Holy Cross sometimes seems to try to spread the offense too much, instead of going back to their go-to scorer. The same thing happened Sunday in the tournament semifinals, where Simmons didn’t take a shot in the final 8 minutes until the game-winner with 5 seconds left.

Coming tomorrow, a look at the second meeting between the two teams.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.