RICHMOND, Va. - With the George Mason bench dancing in approval, the sixth-seeded Patriots bested its Revolutionary Rival 11^th-seeded George Washington 73-59 Thursday evening at Richmond University's Robins Center.

The victory is George Mason’s fifth straight and the Patriots are now 10-0 when scoring at least 70 points in a game this season.

George Mason was paced by Jordan Miller’s 19-point, 10-rebound double-double.
Ronald Polite also got into the act with a career-high 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting.

“I thought he defended at a really high level,” George Mason coach Dave Paulsen said. “Bishop is a tough cover and he got 29, but he had to take 24 shots and he earned them. He scored the ball and every member of our team and coaching staff know that’s what he does every day in practice, he’s been electric in practice. Until tonight it did not translate into the game. This kid is poised to have a breakthrough, and we needed it.”

The Patriots won the rebounding battle by a 42-33 count, had a 42-16 paint advantage and held itself to six turnovers.

I thought we defended at a really high level,” said Paulsen. “Offensively we were challenged in the first half and we just told our guys at halftime that we’re built to win, if you keep doing what you’re doing the lid is going to come off the bucket. We didn’t panic.”

GW was led by sophomore guard James Bishop’s career-high 29 points, as he played all 40 minutes in this contest. Jamison Battle also added 11 points.

“I’m really proud of our team, it was just an amazing year in terms of resiliency,” George Washington coach Jamion Christian said. “I know the world’s going to base us on our record. When you’re here with these guys every day you see the progress that we’ve made from a year ago. How we battled through that adversity through a really tough time and year, I think we handled that better than almost anybody. I think people can see how we are building it, and what we’re looking for.”

It was George Washington which made the first run in the game scoring seven of the contest’s opening 10 points, though George Mason quickly recovered to tie the contest.

Following a Miller basket, George Mason built a lead it held for most of the first half though neither team could pull away as it was a lower-scoring half.

George Washington which led by three points at halftime, after scoring the last four points in the opening 20 minutes, shot 28.6 percent from the field. A Colonials team that is unafraid to shoot from three-point shot range made one in six attempts.

Meanwhile George Mason, shot 26.1 percent and did not make any of its six attempts from deep.

GW opened the second half by scoring the first four points, building the lead up to seven. Though George Mason attempted to come back, it did not fully get going until Jamal Hartwell II sank a three-point basket with 13:55 remaining in regulation.

The make put George Mason to within three points, but it was far from done.
In total, it was a 14-0 run from George Mason which placed it up by eight points.

“We’re not really worried about our shot falling down, we are more worried about playing defense for 40 minutes of the game,” Hartwell II said. “It was the same situation last week when we played them, we weren’t really hitting in the first half, and then we started hitting shots. We just work on playing defense, we know our shots are going to fall.”

George Washington tried to come back, getting the score to within five points when Battle sank a three-point shot, but George Mason proved to be too much.

George Mason had another run in them, this time 11-0 over 3:54 of game action which secured a Patriots win, up 16 with 1:22 to play.

With this victory, George Mason has secured an Atlantic 10 Championship quarterfinal contest which well be contested 5:30 p.m. Friday night against Davidson at the Robins Center. The contest will be televised by NBCSN. These two teams were unable to meet in the regular season.

“It will be a challenge because Davidson offensively has a style unlike anyone else in the A-10,” said Paulson. “It more of the old-school motion offense. We’re going to have to try and pick two or three different things to attack. We’re not going to get their playbook mastered, but just big-picture stuff, going out and competing.”