Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Just The Facts: CAA teams with leading scorer & assist man

Yeah I'm just gonna stick with Dumb & Dumber clips. Because it's THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

Thanks to Dwan McMillan’s sensational Senior Day performance Saturday, the Flying Dutchmen ended the regular season with the CAA’s leading scorer in Mike Moore (20.0 ppg) and assist man in McMillan (4.9 apg). The Dutchmen are just the fifth team in the 30-year history of the CAA (but only the second in the last 20 years) to have different players lead the league in scoring and assists in the same season. Not bad for an 11th-place team.

Such statistical supremacy (hooray alliteration!) would seem to be the domain of dominant teams, but while the Dutchmen have a far worse conference record than any of their predecessors, two of the four finished the regular season with a losing record, including another squad that won just 10 regular season games. None of the teams with the leading scorer and assist man finished higher than third and only one—spoiler alert: it was one of the losing teams—won the CAA Tournament. But every team except one won at least one tourney game.

Here’s a look at how the other four teams with the CAA’s leading scorer and assist man fared, both in the regular season and in the CAA Tournament:

DELAWARE 2004-05: Harding Nana 18.5 ppg, Mike Slattery 6.5 apg. Blue Hens finished 11-20 overall and 7-11 in the CAA. Earned the seventh seed in a 10-team league and won an opening round game before falling in the quarterfinals.

OLD DOMINION 1991-92: Ricardo Leonard 20.4 ppg, Donald Anderson 4.4 apg. Monarchs finished 15-15 overall and 8-6 in the CAA. Earned the fourth seed in an eight-team league and won three games in as many days to win the title and advance to the NCAA Tournament.

GEORGE MASON 1987-88: Kenny Sanders 22.0 ppg, Amp Davis 6.1 apg. Patriots finished 20-10 overall and 9-5 in the CAA. Earned the third seed in an eight-team league and lost in the championship game.

GEORGE MASON 1983-84: Carlos Yates 22.1 ppg, John Niehoff 4.8 apg. Patriots finished 21-7 overall and 5-5 in the CAA. Earned the fourth seed in a six-team league and lost in the first round.

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