Dec. 29, 2008
The George Mason men's basketball team is off to one of the best starts in school history but its toughest test looms on the horizon as the Patriots travel to Dayton on Tuesday to take on the Flyers in their final game of the 2008 calendar year. The game, which tips at 7 p.m., will be televised on MASN and broadcast on WTNT 570.
The Patriots (8-2) and Flyers have only met once before and that came last season when Mason hosted Dayton at Patriot Center. The result was a 67-56 Patriot win, the only loss to mar the Flyers' first 15 games. At 14-1, Dayton rose into the top 20 of both the Associated Press and USA Today/ESPN polls.
This season, Dayton is looking to surpass last year's start. The Flyers are 11-1 with wins over Auburn and Marquette in the Chicago Invitational Challenge. The only loss for Dayton is a 77-59 defeat at Creighton. The Flyers are outscoring the opposition by more than 13 points per game, outrebounding them by more than seven and they are holding teams to 33.5 percent shooting.
Chris Wright leads the team in both scoring and rebounding. He is averaging 12.8 points and 7.4 rebounds while shooting 47.3 percent. Charles Little is the only Flyer shooting better than 50 percent from the field as he is 35 of 68 on the year.
Mason has two regulars shooting better than 50 percent. Darryl Monroe has converted on 58 percent of his shots while Louis Birdsong is making 60 percent of his tries. Monroe is scoring 9.8 points per game and he leads the team in rebounding with 8.5 per game. Birdsong is scoring 8.7 points and grabbing 4.2 rebounds while leading the team with 14 blocks. John Vaughan and Cam Long are both scoring better than 11 points per game for Mason.
This is just the third time in school history that the Patriots have won eight or more of their first 10 games. In 1983-84, Mason was 9-1 as part of a school-record 12-1 start. In 2003-04, Mason was 8-2 as they began a campaign that saw them set a then-school record with 23 wins. This will be Mason's first trip to Dayton since March of 2006 when the Patriots, playing in the NCAA Tournament, begin their run to the Final Four with wins over Michigan State and North Carolina.
