Richmond vs Saint Joseph’s Preview
The Richmond Spiders (10-3) open up conference play against the Saint Joseph’s Hawks (3-9) tonight at the Robins Center (7:00/NBCSW). The Spiders are coming off of 2 straight losses to end non-conference play (Radford & Alabama). Jacob Gilyard chimed in on how he felt Richmond has fared thus far. “I think we didn’t close out the way we wanted to. I think we’re kind of happy with how we did it, just disappointed with how it turned out”. The junior guard currently stands alone with the most steals in the nation (46), through just 13 games.
What to Watch for?
The Hawks are led by their redshirt guard, Ryan Daly. He is a familiar foe for the Spiders, as he was on the Delaware team that defeated Richmond in their 2017-2018 opener. Daly scored 22 for the Blue Hens and will be back in the Robins Center once again. He leads the Hawks in 4 statistical categories (20.8 ppg, 8.2 reb, 4.6 ast, & 1.1 stl). Chris Mooney was asked about Ryan Daly and he described him as “having incredible confidence and he can just do everything”. He will be a focal point in Richmond’s defensive strategy tonight. Blake Francis is 14 points shy of hitting the 1K scoring mark in his career with Wagner and Richmond, while Nick Sherod is 36 points away from eclipsing this career milestone. As a guard leads the Hawks in rebounding, we can look for Grant Golden to have a monster game on the boards.
Home Cooking
Coming into tonight’s game, Richmond sits at 7-0 in front of the Robins Center faithful. I got the opportunity to talk to Coach Mooney about how important it will be to start conference play at home, as well as how his squad feeds off the crowd. “Playing at home is such a gigantic advantage. So many of the power 5 teams have a vast majority of their games at home, and for us it’s no different and we want to make sure we come out and play well. We’ve had tremendous support here and great energy in the building”. Starting out 1-0 will be important for the Spiders as they travel to Rhode Island on Sunday for a noon tip-off.
Prediction:
As the Spiders are coming into this one with a 2 game losing streak on their minds, they will come out ready to play tonight. Grant Golden will be too much for Saint Joseph’s to handle in the paint, and Nick Sherod will find his stroke once again. Blake Francis has a good chance of hitting the 1,000 point mark which could send the Robins Center into a frenzy. My final score prediction for this one will be Richmond 89 – Saint Joseph’s 70. Be sure to follow along on @A10Talk & @AustinDaisey11 on Twitter, as well as on our website at www.a10talk.com. See you tonight Spider Nation!
