A year ago, Javon Greene was suffering the usual growing pains of freshmen in Division I basketball and wondering when his 3-point shot was going to fall in a George Mason uniform.

  Now, two games into a season that has started with agonizingly close losses, the 6-foot-2 guard leads the Patriots in scoring (13.5 ppg) and rebounding (8.0 rpg). He had career highs of 18 points (including 10-for-11 shooting at the foul line), 12 rebounds and 34 minutes in Friday's 78-75 overtime loss to American.

  "The beautiful thing is that he's doing it all off the bench," says coach Dave Paulsen. "He's not caring that he's not starting. He's just embracing who he is.

   "He's just a guy trying to do whatever it takes to help his team win. I think he's just scratching the surface of what he can do."

    The Patriots play at Georgia Southern on Tuesday. The trip amounts to a homecoming for Greene, who grew up in McDonough, Ga., and expects a minimum of 20 family and friends to make the two-hour drive to Statesboro.

  Last year Greene had a breakout game in another homecoming against host Auburn, a 2.5-hour drive from McDonough. Greene finished with a then-career-high 17 points, including his first three-pointer.

    He has started this year 0-5 from beyond the arc, though no one is concerned about his shooting. "I'll be all right," he says.

   Says Paulsen, "The difference this season is we don't want to take him off the court. The reason is he's so much more than (a shooter). He's guarding at a really, really high level. He's rebounding at a high level. He's getting to the rim. He's getting fouled. He's making foul shots. He's getting on the glass. I think he's our best perimeter defender."

   Greene, a big scorer at Henry County HS who had 58 points in a tournament game, struggled for much of last year, especially early. His confidence took a hit.

   "Coming from high school, the game is fast," Greene says. "Everybody is good. Everybody can do everything. Just playing every possession as hard as I could was a big change."

   Greene had plenty of help in negotiating the rough patches from family – his father, John, played at New Jersey Institute of Technology – coaches and teammates, including back-court mates Justin Kier and Otis Livingston II.

   "What he was going through, I went through so it was easy to give him advice," says Kier, a junior who has started 64 of 68 career games at Mason. "I just told him to do the opposite of what I did. I didn't take it very well. Obviously you've seen that he's grown.

   "He'll have some games where he might not play as well. But he'll definitely have many games where you'll see his maturity. He does everything just to win. Team play. He had a great night the other night. A lot of people will see his scoring. But that's not all he gave us. He gave us intensity on defense and all that kind of stuff. He's matured so much since last year."

    The maturity is mental and physical. Greene arrived on campus at 170 pounds. Now he's 190 after work with strength coach Handy Handerahan. 

  "Handy definitely is doing good things in the weight room with me," Greene says. "I'm eating a lot more, too.

   "When I go to the basket, I feel much stronger. On defense, I feel much stronger. I can take on bigger wings. I  can guard the ones, twos, and threes. I just feel a lot different."

   During the off-season, Greene did more than work on his shooting and ball handling: "My main focus was defense. Learn how to slide my feet, cut somebody off, not reach in with my hands and foul.

       "Defense will get you on the court, if you can stop somebody. Offense will come. Defense brings offense with transition baskets and stuff like that."

   Greene is now a key part of the Patriots' rotation. Things have changed in the past year.

  "Now I have more confidence," he says. "The game is slowing down. Everything is much easier and slower."