Very impressive performance by the 2 Gophers tonight. Nate Mason led all scorers with 29, along with a bunch of assists and pesky defense. I don't think they gave an MVP trophy but if they did, he'd get it. Set his teammates up and ran the offense in the 1st half, and then the 2nd half started looking to score ... hit 4 or 5 three pointers in the 2nd half, was great pushing the ball in transition, very good handles, I don't recall more than maybe 1 TO, and finished at the rim. He cleared space for himself for wide open jumpers a couple times with a wicked crossover. He was listed as 6'1" but I thought he looked several inches taller, and he's put on some muscle since last summer's videos. On the other hand, the announcer kept saying he looked shorter than his listed height and questioned whether he was 6 feet. Go figure.
Josh Martin had about 18 (I lost exact track in the mid teens), with 5 or 6 thunderous dunks (apparently he didn't win the pregame slam dunk contest though). The guy can flush around the basket, period. And yeah, he just might be 6'9", or else everyone else's listed height was exaggerated too. The center on his team (UCLA signee) was listed at 7'1" and Martin didn't look that much shorter. He looked comfortable handling the ball and ran the floor really well. The one thing that's going to drive people nuts about Martin is that he seems to be off balance and land on one foot every time he takes a jump shot, and he seems to like the baseline jump shot. He made one, but missed a few and always looked off balance even when he was wide open. He hung around the 3 point line a lot in the second half, when things got really sloppy (his team won 128-98). He wasn't as dominant on the glass as I thought he'd be, but on the other hand almost all of his time on the floor he was besides his 7'1" teammate, who got a ton of boards.
Martin and Mason each played about half of the 40 minute game, but their coach only put them on the floor together for the last 5 minutes. I thought they'd run some stuff together but they didn't.
The defensive effort on both sides was almost nonexistent the second half, but still, most of these guys were high D1 signees ... Gonzaga, Missouri, UCLA, USC, Washington and I'm forgetting some. Martin and Mason looked the part, were 2 of the more athletic guys on the floor, and got their points (unlike some of the guys out there) without being ball hogs.
Terrible broadcast though. The camera was at floor level, refs kept running in front of it. And some bizarre comments by the announcers ... Martin dunked hard one time and the announcer says, "it's a good thing it didn't hit him in the head and go back through the basket, because in that case it wouldn't count." LOL, they went on to debate the rule for a couple minutes.
