Jalen Ray was not ready to call it a career with the Pride on Sunday, March 7 when the senior scored a career-high 34 points to lift the Hofstra men’s basketball team past the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens in the quarterfinals of the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) championship tournament. He led all scorers in the Pride’s 83-75 victory at the Atlantic Union Bank Center in Harrisonburg, VA.
Ray finished the contest with a field goal percentage of just under 50% while shooting lights-out from beyond the arc, going 5-of-10 from the 3-point range. 22 of his 34 points came in the second half.
“I just wanted to start the momentum for my team since they look at me [as] a leader,” Ray said. “So I just had to be the example for everybody, and they just fell in line.”
Isaac Kante added a double-double for the Pride with 14 points and 13 rebounds on 6-of-7 shooting, while Tareq Coburn and Caleb Burgess added 12 and 11 points, respectively. Burgess did it all for the Pride, also tallying nine rebounds and eight assists.
The Pride’s defense was able to hold the Blue Hens to just 35 percent shooting from the field, and they held two members of Delaware’s starting rotation, Ebby Asamoah and Andrew Carr, to just one made shot each.
“We had adjusted a lot of stuff in the zone when we lost to Delaware [earlier in the season],” said Hofstra acting head coach Mike Farrelly. “We adjusted a couple of things for how we were going to guard their actions, and I think it worked really well.”
Hofstra also enjoyed an upper hand on the glass, outrebounding the Blue Hens 44-35. In the second half, the Pride shot 15-of-29 from the field, including 6-of-10 shooting on 3-point attempts.
A tightly contested first half gave way to a formidable lead for Delaware early in the second, as Asamoah’s 3-pointer gave the Hens an advantage of seven points, the biggest lead held by either team up to that point. The Pride exploded into a 9-0 run over the next 2:27 kicked off by a 3-pointer from Ray to take a 45-43 lead. After the Blue Hens took the lead back with 15:15 remaining, another run put the Pride back in front, highlighted by two more 3-pointers from Ray.
After the score was deadlocked at 61-61 for over a minute, Ray drove to his right with Asamoah in front of him, found space with the pump fake and hung in the air to drain a jumper under the basket that gave the Pride a two-point advantage. The Pride led the rest of the way, as they opened up a 72-63 lead with 4:41 left to play.
The No. 4 seed Hofstra Pride now moves on to the CAA semifinals for the third consecutive season. There, they will face the No. 8 seed Elon University fresh off of a 72-71 upset over the No. 1-seeded Dukes of James Madison University. The game will take place at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 8.
Photo courtesy of Hofstra Athletics
