By Pete Janny (@pete_janny)
A new year should bring new optimism for a Manhattan team infected by the injury bug and offensive inconsistency.
Manhattan closed out its non-conference schedule by losing six of its last seven games, giving the Jaspers a 4-7 overall mark heading into the MAAC schedule the rest of the way. Although they have played hard and have been competitive for stretches, Manhattan has not been able to muster enough offense to make up for the loss of Brett Rumpel to a season-ending ACL injury, and Daniel Rouzan, who hit the shelf for all of December thanks to needing emergency appendicitis surgery. Those are Manhattan’s two best players not named Seydou Traore, and their absence has plagued Manhattan on both ends of the floor.
According to Evan Miya’s Defensive Performance Rating, which measures a player’s defensive impact while accounting for factors such as defensive strengths of teammates and the offensive strengths of the opponent’s players, Rumpel and Traore are the only Jaspers to possess a positive rating, each at .015. In other words, with Rumpel, Manhattan gave up .015 less points per possessions over the course of 100 defensive possessions.
Head coach John Gallagher has spoken at length about the defensive impact of Rumpel and his role in slowing down opponents’ top weapons such as Bryant’s Sherif Gross-Bullock and Central Connecticut’s Kellen Amos. The absence of Rumpel in Saturday’s game against Wagner was felt hard given the explosiveness of the Seahawks’ leading scorer, Melvin Council, Jr. His ability to get into the paint gave Manhattan headaches and he feasted with 16 points, 12 rebounds and five assists, staying on the court for all but one minute of the game. But as Gallagher has reiterated, there are no excuses. The missed impact of Rumpel is something Gallagher put behind him.
“We’re not feeling sorry for ourselves,” Gallagher said after the loss to Fordham in November. “It’s college basketball. Everyone has injuries. It’s time to go.”
Rouzan warmed up before the Wagner game, but still was not medically cleared by doctors, once again creating a gaping hole in the paint that no small-ball lineup could come close to filling for Manhattan. To further compound those concerns, 6-foot-9 freshman Xinyi Li was unavailable the last two games due to flu-like symptoms. Both are past their health issues and will be available for the Jaspers’ next game, a home showdown against Niagara on Friday.
“When you don’t have bigs like Danny and Li, your margin of error is slim,” Gallagher said after the loss to Wagner. “That’s just the facts.”
Gallagher was confident that Rouzan could have played on Saturday against Wagner and that his health was finally in a good place. Apparently, the doctors thought otherwise, overruling a return within a month after the surgery and giving Rouzan a few extra days of rest to prepare for Niagara and the long journey of conference play.
“I feel like he could have played (against Wagner), but obviously it’s precautionary,” Gallagher said. “With the way he shot in practice, I feel like he could have played.”
Friday against Niagara will be an interesting test to see where Manhattan stands, and if there will be a sense of urgency to get things off on the right footing now that the competitive non-conference schedule is behind the Jaspers. From a defensive standpoint, Manhattan will be tasked with solving Ahmad Henderson II, Niagara’s leading scorer at 12.7 points per game and a firm contender for MAAC Rookie of the Year honors. The battle of the bigs will be a big determining factor as well, especially if the Jaspers can limit Niagara from the three-point line, where the Purple Eagles shoot 37 percent. In the frontcourt, the dueling will be done by the combinations of Yaw Obeng-Mensah and Harlan Obioha for Niagara against Rouzan and the perimeter-minded Li. Obeng-Mensah, a 6-foot-7 UMBC transfer, is second to Henderson in scoring for the Purple Eagles at 11.7 points per game.
“In a weird way, once we get a win, we’ll have momentum behind us,” Gallagher predicted in his postgame comments after the Wagner loss. “Because with Danny back in the lineup, we’ll be ready to go.”
The matchup assignment on Henderson will go to freshman counterpart Jaden Winston, who has naturally stepped in at point guard after playing off the ball in lineups with Rumpel. With Winston quarterbacking the offense, Manhattan has remained unselfish and together despite shots not always falling. Although not as athletic as Rumpel, Winston has done a solid job pushing the pace and creating opportunities around the rim, especially for mega-athlete Traore, who has linked up with Winston multiple times for alley-oop finishes.
In the six games starting at point guard, Winston has averaged 5.8 assists, including a career-high 10 helpers in the Jaspers’ MAAC opener against Mount St. Mary’s that was won by a Rokas Jocys three in the waning seconds.
“This is the third freshman guard to play for me,” Gallagher said about his confidence in Winston. “He can be one of the best.”
Despite the positives like Winston and Traore, Manhattan has little time to figure out both its shooting and rebounding struggles. As a team, the Jaspers are shooting 31 percent from three, a rate that seems to fit the norm for a Manhattan program over recent seasons. While the arrival of Gallagher has yet to redefine that part of the Jaspers’ reputation, the good news is Manhattan’s two top shooters, Jocys and Briggs McClain, are healthy and have been shooting the ball better.
McClain, who shot 35 percent from three last season at Hartford, has nailed multiple threes in two of Manhattan’s last three games and seems to have finally settled in for the most part after dealing with an ankle injury earlier in the season. Meanwhile, Jocys, who Gallagher has called Manhattan’s best shooter, is currently sixth in the MAAC in three-point percentage at 41 percent. Jocys has found a way to be consistent too, registering multiple threes in seven games this season, highlighted by a 4-of-7 display two weeks ago at Monmouth.
Over the three games Rouzan missed, Manhattan averaged just over 36 three-point attempts from three. In the losses to Wagner and FDU, the volume of threes accounted for well over half of Manhattan’s field goal attempts.
“(About) 55 to 60 percent of the threes were naked looks,” Gallagher said about his team’s 10-for-37 long-distance performance against Wagner. “Guys that have made threes for us uncharacteristically were off.”
Even with the needed size of Rouzan on the court, Manhattan has been outmatched on the boards, and at times, it hasn’t been close. The Jaspers have been outrebounded by 70 combined across all their games. They may be able to get by against smaller lineups around the MAAC, but it is a department the Jaspers will have to be extra concerned about as they look to retool with the return of their length.
A regular observation from non-conference play was seeing just how special of a talent Traore is. With virtually no help inside, Traore still managed to make plays out of nothing and further showcased his versatility as a threat from the mid-range and attacking the hoop. Against Wagner, he had a few drives to the hoop that were finished despite having to contort his body in midair and let his supreme athleticism and instincts overpower his defenders. Gallagher noted how Traore has stepped up under tough circumstances without Rouzan and Li, while declaring something else that is fair to imagine based on the eye test.
“I feel like he could be as good as any player I ever coached and I’ll say that in front of him,” Gallagher said of the Bronx native. “He’s that talented. We are going to do that and that’s how much belief I have in him.”
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