George Mason
- Nov 10, 2022
- 6 min read
George Mason Patriots (10-19 in '21-'22) vs. Maryland Terrapins (23-9 in '21-'22, ranked #17)
Monday, November 7, 2022 @ 7:00 PM
Fairfax, VA
EagleBank Arena
THE SCHOOL
George Mason University is a public research university in Fairfax, Virginia. Originally founded in 1957, the school was a satellite campus of the University of Virginia until 1972, when it became an independent institution. With nearly 40,000 students, George Mason is the largest public university in Virginia and has the most on-campus students in the Commonwealth. (Liberty has a bazillion students but most of them are online.)
I'm not going to lie, I didn't really know who George Mason was. Would you have guessed that he's a Founding Father? You'd be right. According to his Wikipedia page, Mason was a Virginia planter and longtime friend of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and was part of the Constitutional Convention, but he refused to sign it without a Bill of Rights (which later happened) and a promise to end to the slave trade (which took longer [though Mason was a slaveholder himself]). He lived just a few miles away from the modern-day GMU campus, so that's probably why the school is named after him.
The GMU Patriots compete in the Atlantic 10 (A-10) Conference in NCAA Division I. If you don't live in the DMV-area and you've heard of George Mason, it's probably because of the men's basketball team's 2006 run to the Final Four. As an 11-seed, Mason won four NCAA Tournament games - including an all-time classic over 1-seed UConn in the Elite Eight - and became the second double-digit seed to reach the Final Four.
Mason's women's basketball team (who I saw) has never quite seen that level of success. As you can see above, they only went 10-19 last year, but that's a huge improvement over where they've been. In 2020-21, the Patriots went 0-14 in conference play, so let's hope they continue their rise. They are picked to finish 14th out of 15 in the A-10 this season.
The University of Maryland is a public research university in College Park, Maryland. The Terrapins compete in the Big Ten Conference. The Terps are consistently one of women's college basketball's top teams. They have been a top-5 seed in the NCAA Tournament each season since 2005 and they are coming off back-to-back Sweet Sixteen appearances. I visited Maryland's men's team last season.
THE TOWN
I feel like last year's map was getting a little cluttered so I've started over. I'll merge the two later.
Also - I've moved! I now live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC. So my little home icon is in a different spot.
As the crow flies, George Mason's campus is about seventeen miles from my apartment. However, seeing that I am not a crow, I must drive. And since the game is on a weeknight, I must drive through rush hour DC traffic. This is highly inadvisable. It took about an hour to get to the arena, which is actually a little quicker than I'd thought. Still - not the most fun a driver can have.
Fairfax is a southwestern suburb of Washington, DC; GMU is located just outside city limits in Fairfax County. Fairfax County is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. The median household income is over $134,000, which is almost double the American average. It used to be ranked as America's wealthiest county, but has since been surpassed by bordering Loudoun County.
It was dark, late, and the basketball arena is on the edge of campus, so I didn't see much of George Mason University. It seemed nice - very suburban. I walked around for a bit but was not in the interesting part of campus.
Formerly known as the Patriot Center, EagleBank Arena has been around since the mid-80s. I think it's aged well, though. It's a simple bowl structure with all gold and green chairback seats and a state-of-the-art center-hung scoreboard. While there are possibly too many seats for Mason's average attendance, the arena doesn't feel barren even though it isn't full. The outside of it looks impressive and there's free parking directly outside the building, which I always appreciate.
THE GAME
Would you like to know one of the frustrating parts of attending Division I basketball games?
TicketMaster fees.
You often have to pay more than the ticket's worth in convenience fees, service fees, etc. To avoid TicketMaster's extraordinary additional charges, I'll usually purchase my ticket at the box office instead of buying it online. No one has paper tickets anymore, but they'll usually text or email a digital barcode that can be scanned.
I walked up to the counter and paid $10 (but no fees) for my ticket. They asked for my phone number and texted a link to me. But here's the thing: my link didn't work; it took me to a dead page. I tried for about five minutes to get the page to work but it never did. I eventually went up to the ticket-scanner-people and they had no idea what to do. The supervisor got called in and she was like "well that's weird." She eventually asked me "you're not a spy, are you?" and let me in without scanning my ticket. This is a problem with digital tickets.
Also, who would I be spying for? It's a basketball game available to any member of the public for $10.
~
I was impressed by George Mason's turnout for this game. No, the game wasn't anywhere near a sellout, but I thought it was a good crowd for a weeknight women's nonconference game. Particularly, it seemed like a knowledgeable, loud crowd who stuck around to the end even though (spoiling the ending) this was not a close game.
Part of the crowd's energy is, no doubt, thanks to the pep band, Doc Nix and the Green Machine. In the attached photo, you can see Professor Michael Nickens ("Doc Nix") leading the band in his easily identifiable white suit and yellow hat. This NCAA.com video from 2015 ranked the Green Machine as the best pep band in college basketball, and I can't imagine there are many that are better. I counted about eighty-five band members, which included a rotating cast of singers, a keyboard player, a bassoon player, someone playing something that looked like an electronic marimba, a violinist, and four different kids playing the cowbell. They played as frequently as they could, always bringing sound and energy to the arena. The Green Machine is worth the price of admission by themselves.
~
From the opening tip you could tell that Maryland's #0, Diamond Miller, was the best player on the court. She is a two-time All-Big Ten performer and is projected to be the second pick in the next WNBA draft, according to lines.com. From a size, speed, and talent perspective, you can tell she's a future star. And she played well tonight - Miller scored 11 points in her first 9 minutes. Unfortunately, it was the only 9 minutes she played; Miller banged up her knee and did not return. The Terps didn't really need her, though.
UMD got out to a quick 9-0 lead before Mason could do much about it. Maryland led 20-9 after the first quarter, and despite a couple good three-pointers from the Patriots, Maryland's lead expanded in the second. By the halftime break, the Terrapins led by 22 points, 39-17.
Without Miller, Abbey Meyers (#10) stood out. Meyers (also a projected lottery pick) couldn't miss from three-point land and George Mason never figured out how to slow her down. Meyers went 5-6 from three and led the game in scoring with 19 points.
George Mason didn't have many bright spots, but #0, Taylor Jameson, was clearly one. She was the only Patriot who could reliably drive into the paint and she brought some hustle to a near-hopeless cause. Jameson impressed with 15 points and she could be a factor in A-10 play.
There were no surprises in the second half. Maryland got on several scoring runs and they had an answer for everything Mason tried to do. It was a good time to zone out and think about other things.
Final: Maryland 88, George Mason 51
Here are my goals for the upcoming college basketball season: 1) See every school in Washington, DC
2) See every Division I school in the DC area and Maryland
3) Also see some other stuff
I think this'll be a great basketball season and I'm looking forward to getting back to my favorite hobby.
Thanks for reading.
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