With a little less than 14 minutes remaining in the Johns Hopkins men’s basketball team’s game against Dickinson on Feb. 11, Blue Jays senior forward Sidney Thybulle stuffed Red Devils forward Martin Mann in emphatic fashion … and then let him know about it.
Thybulle was assessed a technical foul, but the block was symbolic of the Hopkins’ defensive effort not only that night but the entire season. The Jays held Dickinson to 33.9 percent shooting from the field and 15.4 percent shooting from 3-point range, part of a 71-53 win that pushed Hopkins to 20-3 overall and 14-2 in the Centennial Conference in the wake of a key injury.
Give some credit for that to Thybulle, who made his presence felt in his nearly 22 minutes of play despite scoring just four points. The 6-foot-8, 245-pound forward had two blocks on the night, including the one against Mann.
“I guess I’ve got to cool down a bit, but we definitely take pride on the defensive end,” Thybulle said. “… We held them to 19 in the first half, and that’s how we expect to win games. Obviously, some days the shots will fall and some days they won’t. But as long as we hang our hat on the defensive end, we know we have a pretty good shot.”
Hopkins’ defensive performance against Dickinson was a continuation of what it has done all season. The Jays are seventh among Division III teams in scoring defense (58.0 points per game), sixth in field goal percentage allowed (.370) and 20th in 3-point defense (.286) as of Feb. 13.
It starts with a sticky perimeter defense by guards Carson James, Brian Johansson, Jayden Nixon, John Windley and Lincoln Yeutter. All have posted 14 or more steals on the season. James, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound senior, leads the way with 29 steals.
“That’s something we pride ourselves on — defeating ball screens, making sure we’re up in the ball and just winning the first dribble,” Carson said. “That’s something we always talk about — stick the face and win the first dribble are two of the emphasis we always have on defense. We’ve got a lot of good defenders up and down, so that’s something we pride ourselves on.”
And if that perimeter defense breaks down, big men Thybulle and Will Sykes are there to clean it up.
“I definitely see myself as an elite rim protector and someone who can affect shots around the rim,” said Thybulle, the reigning Centennial Conference Defensive Player of the Year. “We have a lot of good on-ball guards and they know that they can get up into guys and force them to the rim and I’ve got their back.”
That defense has helped Hopkins rise to No. 8 in the d3hoops.com top 25 and second place in the Centennial Conference behind 15-1 Swarthmore, but top scorer Tom Quarry suffered a broken left wrist at Franklin & Marshall on Feb. 7 that will keep him out for the rest of the season.
Quarry, a 6-foot-7, 205-pound graduate forward out of Philadelphia, averaged 14.6 points and 3.9 rebounds per contest this season. He finishes his Hopkins career 13th on the Jays’ all-time scoring list (1,147 points) and fourth in 3-pointers (198).
“I think the biggest thing with him is you might find someone who’s as good a teammate, you’re not going to find anyone who’s better as a teammate, you’re not going to find someone who cares more,” Jays head coach Josh Loeffler said. “Aside from the statistics and the tangible items that you can look at on a stat sheet, the way he played really embodied what we wanted. He just played so hard just in the name of winning, not for himself. He’s an inspirational player in that way.”
Quarry helped Hopkins win the Centennial Conference and earn NCAA Tournament berths in 2019-20 and 2021-22, but the Jays won’t have him around when the league tournament tips off later this month. (Games are played at the home gym of the higher seed.) Hopkins has two regular-season games remaining, first against Washington College Feb. 15 and then at Ursinus Feb. 18.
Windley (15 points) and Nixon (14) led the way offensively against Dickinson in the Jays’ first game without Quarry.
“We have good depth and we have good players who now have to play in slightly different roles,” Loeffler said. “But we are not ill-equipped to handle injuries, because we do have good depth. Obviously, you’re not going to replace Tom. But can we make up for his absence in the aggregate? And I think we can.”
But ultimately, whether Hopkins makes another postseason run comes back to its bread and butter.
“We always say it starts with stops,” Thybulle said. “We definitely want to hammer home the defensive end. We know we’ve got a pretty strong conference this year and a couple games ahead of us. We’ve just got to take it one possession at a time and just get after it.”
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Johns Hopkins Athletics