The Mask, starring Tyler Bernardini

If you’ve watched the men’s hoops team play recently, you probably noticed senior Tyler Bernardini sporting an awkward-looking, plastic protective mask over the last six games. While Bernardini is recovering from a broken nose, the rest of the team might want to consider getting hands on some masks if it’ll have the same effect it seems to have had on Bernardini.

The 6-foot-6 guard first donned the mask on December 22^nd at Delaware in a game that the Quakers won, but one in which Bernardini struggled, scoring only 4 total points. However, since that game, the former leading scorer has notched totals of 18, 22, 17, 17 and a career high 27 points in the last five games.

To give a better idea of Bernardini’s recent spike in scoring output, in the first eight games of the season before the mask, Bernardini averaged an unremarkable 8.0 points per game, including a goose egg against Pittsburgh on November 27. However, in his last six outings and coincidentally ever since he started wearing the protective mask, the former top scorer has averaged 17.5 points per game and has seen an increase in his shooting percentage.

Is this just a coincidence? Possibly. It could very well just be that, after a year on the sideline, Bernardini is finally getting in the groove of things.

However, there are others — Richard “Rip” Hamilton of the Detroit Pistons immediately comes to mind — who might consider masks or other accessories to be good luck charms of sorts. Hamilton accredited his mask for the Pistons’ championship run in 2004. And while I’m not a superstitious person, from the way Bernardini has been playing recently, it may not be a bad idea to keep the mask on.