For the second year in a row, I am sitting courtside on Thanksgiving Weekend at the Provident Pride of Maryland Tournament. Nothing like seeing eight games of basketball in two day! It is a heck of a way to get the basketball motor running.

Now, the first round games were played on Tuesday with Salisbury beating Goucher, St. Mary’s beating McDaniel, Johns Hopkins beating Frostburg, and Washington beat Stevenson. So, here are the four games for today:

Goucher vs. Frostburg
McDaniel vs. Stevenson
Johns Hopkins vs. Salisbury
Washington vs. St. Mary’s

Here are a few observations from the first two games so far today:
Frostburg beats Goucher 64-56:
I have been around the Goucher program since I entered college and in the last few years have never seen the team shoot free-throws as badly as they are. Now, that wasn’t their biggest problem today. They shot .610 from the charity line for the game, but they shot .268 from the field and only lost by eight!!! But a few things that could have helped: Goucher was at the line 41 times, hitting 25 of those attempts. Just ten more would have made a major difference and the team would have shot above .700. And of the 56 shots they took for the game, they only hit 15! 15!!! This team has a lot of players putting up bad shots and making questionable decisions. They need to come together as a unit and stop playing street-style basketball on both ends of the court and they could be a tough team.

Frostburg looks liek they could be tough and they certainly game Hopkins a good game on Tuesday, but I wondered how much Goucher made Frostburg look good versus the Bobcats actually playing well. They take on McDaniel on Sunday, that could be a good barameter.

McDaniel beat Stevenson 75-66:
Stevenson is a streaky team. They made runs in the game on Tuesday against Washington and had the lead several times in the first half. However, they found them selves down 20+ in the second half and despite a run late in the game, were just too far down to make a serious challenge. If they can play consistent basketball for an entire 40 minutes, or even 35, they will finally find that first win of the season and maybe play a serious spoiler in the CAC.

McDaniel is not the same team as last year. They miss Brett Foelber and while they have good players, it doesn’t look like they are on the same page, just yet. They are certainly athletic and play very tough defense, but they make some simple mistakes on offense sometimes and seem to get flat. They will have to be on their toes against another athletic team in Frostburg tomorrow.

Johns Hopkins vs. Salisbury is about to tip off… I will recap my thoughts after their game.