Rod Wilmont in happier times (not last night's fourth quarter). He'd probably be happier again if Earl Calloway, or anyother point guard, would join the Mad Ants. Also, this photo was taken from Potter's New Blog, who also did a short, but sweet, recap of last night's game.

View full size photo »

Notes on game 2!  Which was actually the first game played!  Exclamation point!  And now, bullets!

• Fort Wayne had this game.  They HAD it.  Then the fourth quarter happened.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.
• Oliver Lafayette didn't miss a shot for the entire first half.  That's right.  It happened, and then I wrote it, and you just read it.  He had 25 points at halftime and 32 for the game, finishing with 12-18 shooting, 6-8 from outside.  Of course, all that shooting-and-not-missing stuff meant that he also wasn't, you know, passing the ball.  Which is what point guards usually do.  Just four assists for Lafayette, and no one other than Rod Wilmont really seemed interested in picking up the slack.  Lafayette only had two turnovers, but again, he basically didn't pass for an entire half.
• A day after I say that Sean Sonderleiter has been playing well because he's coming off the bench, he starts and plays 31 and a half minutes.  18 points, good.  Four rebounds, not good.  A combined 28 points and 23 rebounds for John Bryant and Alade Aminu, also not good.  I don't see what's so hard about this, other than the fact that with Rob Kurz and Jared Reiner both out with injuries (Reiner was actually injury-waived), the Mad Ants don't really have anyone else who should start in the middle.
• A day after Scott says that Ryan Ayers is terrible (I said it at least a week ago), Ayers goes out and...isn't terrible?  Huh.  The eight rebounds are a season high, and the 12 points are the most he's scored in 11 games.  Now he'll go back to putting up five points, two rebounds and an assist.
  
• So that fourth quarter.  Problem 1: Lafayette started missing most of his shots, and kept not passing.  Problem 2: Rod Wilmont missed every shot he took (he even missed two out of three free throws), and he took a lot of them early on.  Problem 3: Other than Anthony Kent they don't have a lot of offensive rebounding talent, so a lot of those misses went the other way.  Kyle McAlarney also had a bad shooting night, and if you add all of those up a four point lead becomes a 12 point loss.  This isn't magic, people.  Is this magic?  This isn't magic.
  
• I just realized I haven't really talked about any Erie players.  Some guys played well, at least on one end of the floor (Cedric Jackson had 31 points on 20 shots, eight assists and five boards, but, well, did I mention that Oliver Lafayette had 25 points in a half?), but Fort Wayne collapsed so thoroughly that Erie didn't have to do a whole lot to take this game.