For the first five games of the season, men’s basketball was clearly an inside-out team. With Kevin Larsen and Tyler Cavanaugh locking down what started to look like the most imposing frontcourt in the Atlantic 10 conference, GW outrebounded five of its first six opponents, including then-No. 6 Virginia, and outscored them in the paint.
But then Larsen, one of the players most feared by opponents, stopped scoring. He has scored two or fewer points in back-to-back games going into Tuesday’s matchup against Penn State.
What is head coach Mike Lonergan to do? Keep going inside to Larsen, he says.
“We’re going to go to him early and often and hopefully he’ll be prepared and do a much better job of establishing the inside game for us next week,” Lonergan said.
Lonergan said that he felt Larsen turned the corner in the second half of Wednesday night’s win over Seton Hall. The big man finished the game with only two points, but had four assists. He would have had more, but his teammates lost a couple of his passes. He chose good passes and avoided turnovers despite being double-teamed.
Overall, Larsen played more solidly inside in the second half than he had in the first, and did get his only points from the field then. With his back to the basket, Larsen dribbled a couple times before pivoting and hooking his shot over Seton Hall forward Angel Delgado, who Larsen had moved around with ease setting up his finish.
It was the type of move Lonergan wants Larsen to make: simple, and one that uses his strength at his position. But during the first half, and during the game against Cincinnati, Larsen spent much more time playing outside and didn’t seem to want to score. He took just four shots against the Bearcats and against the Pirates. Even when Larsen had good looks at the basket, looks that could have been layups, he passed.
“We’re begging him to score. We’re begging his teammates to ask him to try to score, so I think he was still thinking about the Cincinnati game where he had one point and tonight, I don’t know, he had two points,” Lonergan said. “So we want him to get back to being a double-figure scorer, and then he’ll become a better passer. It’s hard to get assists when the other team knows you’re not looking to score.”
With Larsen going to the basket less, Cavanaugh has averaged 15.1 points and 7.8 rebounds per game so far. He’s taking 27.9 percent of GW’s shots and has a true shooting percentage of 59.8, second only among starters to Patricio Garino, who is making 68.4 percent of his three pointers, third best for a Division I player in the nation.
Cavanaugh said that when Larsen spends more time playing outside the paint he plays inside “a little more” and takes advantage of the “good spacing.”
“I missed a couple that Kevin gave me point blank, late, but the guys found me in good spots where I could score, where I was wide open,” Cavanaugh said. “We were making the extra pass very well.”
Larsen has a knack for making an extra pass, like he did in slinging a beautiful ball to Joe McDonald who was right under the basket for a layup, from just a step outside the paint. That is exceptional for a big man. It was sweet when it happened, but McDonald looking up through the strings and Larsen 12 feet from the basket isn’t exactly what GW wants to base its offense around. Sometimes Larsen is guilty of making one pass too many. The three games in which Larsen has scored less than five points are also the three games in which GW has been outrebounded this year.
Still, that’s always been a factor in his game. Lonergan made nearly identical comments after the big man was a non-factor in GW’s loss to Virginia last year, which Larsen bounced back from both last season and this year against the Cavaliers. Overall, he has an offensive rating of 112.2 which puts him behind Patricio Garino and Yuta Watanabe among GW’s starters. Larsen has also been smart when it comes to fouling – he’s drawing 5.1 fouls per 40 minutes while committing only 2.4.
Having a starter score three points in two games and, at times, seem like he is actively avoiding the basket is not good for the Colonials, certainly. But history says Larsen returns to form before long, which Lonergan said he’s already seeing, and his overall body of work this season is still very strong.
