The Saint Joseph Hawks travel to our nation's capital tonight to take on the George Washington Colonials in the first round of the Atlantic 10 Tournament. Tipoff is at 7pm tonight and will be shown on CBS College sports. St. Joe's just barely qualified for the tournament with a 4-12 conference record and enter as the #12 seed out of 12 teams. George Washington enters the tourney as a #5 seed with a 10-6 record.
The story all year with Phil Martelli's St. Joe team has been their inability to score. They generated only 63.5 points per game this season, which is the second worst in the conference. They're being outscored by an average of 6.1 points per game, which is also near the bottom of the A-10. Their key player is sophomore guard Carl Jones, who averages 17 points per game. Also of note is freshman Langston Galloway, who averages 12.8 ppg and was named to the all A-10 freshman first team.
After a pretty poor season, Hawks fans don't seem to have a whole lot of interest in tonight's game. A bus that had been scheduled to take fans from the St Joe campus to GW has been canceled due to lack of interest...
George Washington is led by junior guard Tony Taylor, who scored 14.0 ppg this year. In GW's last game with St Joe's, Taylor set his career record for free throws made and attempted.
The Colonials have been a very good defensive team at home, which should be worrying for a Hawks team that struggles to score. Over their last six home games, opponents have averaged just under 60 ppg against GW.
Both teams have actually won this tournament twice with St. Joe's most recent title coming in 1997 and GW's in 2007.