MBB Game 14 Charleston, Jan 4 (Thu), 7 PM

[Jojogunne]

The inaugural season of the Coastal Athletic Association begins! It will be good to have some home games to attend.

Charleston comes in with a 9-4 record, with wins over Saint Joseph's, Rhode Island, and Coastal Carolina (beat them twice). The Cougars have won five games in a row. They are led by three double-digit scorers: Ben Burnham, Reyne Smith and Ante Brzovic.

Both MSG2 and FloHoops will carry the game.

[triplec2195]

They actually lost to #13 Florida Atlantic by 16. That would have been a nice win. Beat Iona by 2. This should be a good game.

[Jojogunne]

You're right, TripleC. I'll fix that.

[triplec2195]

Just taking a Quick Look at COC stats they give up 74.5 and score 78.5 a 4 point differential. We score 77 and give up 71 or an approx 6 point differential. We have better 2 point and three shooting percentages with our rebounding being our Achilles heal. We should be in a good place in this game if stats hold true but a lot of intangibles can come into play. Hopefully we get off to a win to start CAA play.

[Cards]

Too bad this home matchup (which should be one of the better conf games this season) will be lightly attended with no students ......no real homecourt advantage.

[Jojogunne]

Hofstra is offering free admission to our January home games to any and all local students, so we may have some younger fans there after all.

[Cards]

Hofstra is offering free admission to our January home games to any and all local students, so we may have some younger fans there after all.

Maybe they can fill the lions den with the middle school kids who came for the early season scrimmage (DII/DIII game). Highest decibel level I've heard at the Mack in quite some time

[triplec2195]

Yeah that would be great deafening noise pumping up the players let's hope that happens

[triplec2195]

ESPN giving us a 77% chance of winning this game. I wonder what crystal ball they're using?? Wow that seems high.

[Wags]

ESPN giving us a 77% chance of winning this game. I wonder what crystal ball they're using?? Wow that seems high.

Mainly, Hofstra being at home. For the game at Charleston on 3/2, they give Hofstra a 45.7% chance to win.

[triplec2195]

So the line might be around just 5 point favorites.

[EvanJ]

The CAA will have five games on TV at the same time, which I am guessing is the first time that happened. All three teams in the area are televised.
All the games are at 7:00 P.M.

UNCW at Drexel on NBC Sports Philadelphia
Charleston at Us on MSG2
Elon at W&M
Campbell at North Carolina A&T
Hampton at Delaware on Delmarva Sports Network (a channel I had not heard of, and it does not have a Wikipedia page)
Towson at Monmouth on SNY
Stony Brook at Northeastern on CBS Sports Network

Drexel won 99-65 hosting Hampton. Those two teams will have one more CAA game played than everybody else until February 3 when Hampton has an annual nonconference HBCU game.

[HofstraMathew]

ESPN giving us a 77% chance of winning this game. I wonder what crystal ball they're using?? Wow that seems high.

I know this gets mentioned every game thread.

The chance of winning is based on the two teams rankings in the ESPN BPI. The below link shows what goes into it.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi

[triplec2195]

Thanks for posting this and I thought they were using crystal balls, lol!

[dutchPride86]

Charleston is not yet at the level they were at last season, but still think this game is closer to 50/50 at best (certainly not even that if Fritz is still out). Charleston already has 2 top 75 wins with St Joes and Liberty, and they played Florida Atlantic pretty tough well into the 2nd half of that loss.

Charleston starts 3 true bigs with Brzovic (who's numbers surprisingly haven't jumped much this year but was a 1st team all conf projection), Frankie Policelli from Stony Brook (still weird that you can transfer in conf like that), and Ben Burham, who after 2 yrs coming off Charlestons bench is now their leading scorer at nearly 14 ppg. They also have a potentially terrifying 6'11 freshman coming off the bench in James Scott. The kid is shooting an absurd 81% from the field and is 23-23 (not a typo!) over Charlestons current 5 game win streak. He's also already 2nd in the CAA in blocks at 1.6/g despite only playing 15 min a game (right in between Amari Williams and Charles Thompson).

Where Hofstra should have the edge is in the backcourt though. Can't let Reyne Smith get hot from 3, he can easily go off and make like 7 3s, but if you clamp down he'll just as easily have like 2-13 nights. Want to see Carlos break down Charlestons guards off the dribble and finish at the basket like he did late in the St John's game, and would hope to see Tyler's efficiency go up and see him get cleaner looks than the last few games.

This is an incredibly important game for us to set the tone for conference play... like it or not Charleston is as close as it gets to the face of the conference, and they're probably also the biggest threat to jump to the A10 when UMass leaves (though that's for another day on another thread). If Hofstra wants to be taken seriously as a CAA title contender, need to win this game

[HUSID80]

Agreed Dutch. This game could set the tone for the entire CAA slate. We then come back vs. Delaware on Sat....winning both would be huge and set us up for a good run in CAA play.

[HofstraMathew]

Good chance this first week of CAA play is our toughest week of the conference schedule. If we can pull out a 2-0 week it will really help set the tone.

[EvanJ]

Our toughest week will be our last two games, which are at UNCW and Charleston, unless you assume that our injuries will be better then.

CJ Fulton averages 3.4 points, and I wonder if that is the lowest average by any player who leads his team in minutes. They used 16 players, and 12 played in at least 10 of 13 games. Fulton leads them with 26.2 minutes, and is their point guard with 4.0 assists. Reyne Smith is second in minutes, but started only 6 of 13 games. Like us, they attempt a lot of threes. Their 12 regulars have over 20 percent of their attempts be threes except for James Scott, who has not attempted any. 7 of their regulars attempt more threes than twos. They shoot threes only .306, with nobody shooting better than .394. Starters Ante Brzovic, Frankie Pollicelli, and CJ Fulton combine to shoot threes .261.

[Wags]

Good chance this first week of CAA play is our toughest week of the conference schedule. If we can pull out a 2-0 week it will really help set the tone.

They did start 1-1 last year with that surprising home loss at the buzzer to NC A&T and still finished 16-2 despite that, so 2-0 isn't absolutely necessary but would be a great springboard for navigating what's to come.

This likely won't be their toughest CAA week though (maybe the second-toughest) - they close with a final week at UNCW and at Charleston two days later.

[Polito]

After a pretty lackluster OOC, this team needs to find another gear. Speedy & Co. have been talking a big game about how they're doing great will be just fine and all that other coach speak. Well let's see it. We've heard all the excuses - I don't want to hear one thing about refs, travel, injuries, or level of comp.

I have not been impressed with this group. Not calling anything a must win yet, and the toughest part of the schedule and the part that will fully decide the conf champ one way or another will be the final week. Personally think they are in for a rough start based on what we've seen and the fact CofC actually has good wins, but either way NO EXCUSES, it's time for HU to put up or shut up.