I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[CoachC]

Thx, Wayne, it was a big surprise, and a positive way to go into the posteason. Maybe I should have had those guys running laps all day much sooner!

[CoachC]

Mar 1: Big South Tourney preliminary round:

(9)Campbell vs (8) High Point... to see how much stronger this conference has been this season, you need look no further than than this game between 2nd division seeds. As much as I hate the Camels, even I will admit they are a decent team. And the Panthers lead the nation in scoring, and would have easily been among the top 4 seeds the each of the past 3 years. Scary stuff, and they are both in our bracket.

(12) Charleston Southern vs (5) Coastal Carolina ... this is easily the best team the Chanticleers have had in the 3 seasons they've been "hosting" the supposedly neutral court conference tournament. They are fully capable of winning the whole damn thing and have sold close to 1200 tickets for the weekend. For the first time, all allotted tournament tickets for the top 5 teams were sold by the 2nd week of February and the conference could have easily sold twice as many tickets if the venue wasn't so small. With 3 South Carolina teams among the top 5 seeds and with ourselves and VMI having had great seasons, high RPIs and fans with a willingness to travel, we might have been able to fill a venue 3 times the size of the HTC center for the last 3 rounds. Scary too, that the Chanticleers are ALSO in our bracket. Incidentally, we sold out our allotment of 300 tickets back in December, and our fans bought 200 more when unsold tickets from other teams went on sale last week. The unsold tickets were gone in about 6 hours I'm told. I'm guessing we might have had 1000 of our fans making the trip if the tickets had been available. I understand the conference's reasoning about making a tourist destination like Myrtle Beach the place to hold the tournament, but for this season, at least, it backfired. The HTC center is an attractive venue, but it's capacity of 3600 has proven to be WAY to small this season.

(11)Radford vs (6) Winthrop.... the folks at Winthrop must be thrilled at getting the 6 seed and are probably as mystified about how it happened as I am. It is turning out to be a disadvantage to have won the top seed, because the bottom bracket is clearly the weaker of the two.

(10) UNCA vs (7) Longwood... the Lancers clearly were not as strong this year, but are still a very dangerous team to which Liberty can attest.

[CoachC]

Mar 1:
High Point 76 Campbell 73. Gulp, we gotta play these guys again.
Radford 79 Winthrop 72...so much for that surprising 6 seed
UNCA 57 Longwood 73... the Lancers are finishing strong. I don't think anyone is looking forward to facing them. They may have been the 7 seed, but they certainly capable of making it to the finals.
CS 69 vs Coastal Carolina 83 ... no surprise that the "neutral" hosts walk away easily in this one.

Of the 8 remaining teams, 7 have a legitimate chance of walking away with the championship. I'm not really counting anyone out, but i have to envy Presbyterian as the 3 seed being the only team with a walk in the park in the 2nd round. If the Blue Hose lose to Radford in the 2nd round I will go kiss the Campbell Camel mascot squarely on the lips.

[CoachC]

Is there a better 8 seed in any conference tourney in the country than these Panthers? Maybe in the Big East which now has conference membership of about 2 or 3 million, but probably nowhere else. Certainly there is no 8 seed in the country capable of putting more points on the board(up to 76.9/g now, a point and a half higher than when we saw them 2 weeks ago). I don't care which DI conference you are from or where you finish....if you can lead the nation in offense you are doing SOMETHING right. Probably no 8 seed in the country with a head coach I respect more than my friend Roy Thompson either.

We split the regular season series with them... a tough tough tough 3 OT loss to them on the road back in January, and an anything but easy 78-67 decision over them at home 2 weeks ago. As I said before that game.. we KNOW they are gonna score points... we KNOW Hudson is going to get his average. Defense does matter in this game... we need to keep everyone else in check as we did in that last game in Boiling Springs and make Hudson try to beat us on his lonesome... but bottom line is.. we are simply going to have to outscore these guys. First team to 75 is probably going to win.

A sloppy first 13 minutes of the game where each team has turned the ball over 7 times. To make matters worse we are shooting blanks (3-18 from the field). We are fortunate to be down only 19-10. Our defense hasn't been bad at all, but on offense we look like a bunch of penguins with two left feet waddling around in two right shoes.

A 23-22 halftime score and a combined 21 turnovers betweem THESE two teams should give some indication of just how ugly the first half was? Did i say first team to 75? How about first team to 55?

Our defense was excellent, but I'm not going to give them too much credit for our own 32% shooting. We simply sucked at scoring and ball handling. We are fortunate to only be down 1 at the half. Strange game thus far, very strange game indeed. We'd better get our offense straightened out in the 2nd half before they put a 15-0 hurting on us. I'm guessing Roy is probably telling his guys the same.

4 stls in 4 straight defensive trips and at the 7:18 mark we've opened up a 17 point lead. Our offense still stinks, but we are finally getting back to the thing that made us so formidable during that great non-conference preseason... Defense! We lost our way in the conference season when the defense stopped doing it's job. Is this team finding it's way? I dunno...when your team suddenly starts shooting less than 40% a game, that becomes a hard question to answer, but based on results...hell yeah! still a lot of time left however against the scoringest team in the nation. Scoringest...yes... it's a word...i just made it up and wrote it in the dictionary... look it up.

Take the nation's leading scoring team and hold them 21 or 22 points below their average, turn them over 28 times with an incredible 20 steals, and what do you have? A team capable of doing a lot of damage deep in the season... that's what you have.

Not even concerned about the offense any more.. this game we got back to Bulldog basketball in spades. I don't care that we only shot 44 percent from the field. No matter what we did offensively we got back to the other end of the floor and defended hard.. diamond hard... amoeba zone trap them til they convince themselves they can't hang on to the ball so might as well hand it to you hard.

our starting backcourt was mediocre offensively in this one:

Battle 4 pts, 4 asts, , 4 rebs
Felts 8 pts, 2 asts, 2 stls

Ike is thriving... 20 pts, 5 stls

our big guys are back to playing like they did at the start of the season:

Moore 4 asts, 4 stls
"Zilla 12 pts, 4 rebs
Brown 6 pts, 2 asts, 11 rebs, 3 stls

The 3 of them owned the paint defensively.

and the bench is suddenly productive in the right ways:
Sanders (2 pts, but 2 asts, 5 rebs, 5 stls in 16 minutes, Geisen(8 pts, 2 rebs, 3 stls in 16 minutes), along with solid perfomances by Bobby White and Angelo Madison

Bottom line: when we play great defense teams mutter to themselves about their inability to get a shot off at all let alone score. Meanwhile we score enough on offense made from defense to cover up a lot of scar tissue.

onward.

Final:
G-W 66 HP 55

[Wayne23]

Way to go, Coach. Keep 'em focused!

[CoachC]

Mar 2: In the other Quaterfinals.

Liberty 62 Longwood 57
Radford 81 Presbyterian 74 I began puckering up to kiss the Camel, but the Campbell contingency has already gone home.
Coastal Carolina 90 VMI 71 Must be nice to play on your own court in a "neutral" tournament.

[CoachC]

Playing the "home" team. This won't be easy. We need to play the same level of defense we had against them in the regular season finale a week and a half ago. Our contingent in the crowd had better make a lot of noise!

In the first half we shot just 42.3 from the field and Felts went scoreless. Our 8 turnovers were too many and we didn't rebound well (14-17,3-7). Our defense was once again superb however, holding them to 34.5 from the field and turning them over 13 times with 9 steals. We also shot 10 more freethrows. We have an 8 point lead at the half 35-27.

In the 2nd half, the referees decided they weren't getting enough face time on tv so decided to join forces with the Chanticleers so they could get some applause from the crowd. Their efforts force overtime.

at the end of regulation it's 69-69

And the refs win, as their point guard was able to charge through the lane and hit a buzzer beater for the one point victory. A disappointing result in over time. Our poor rebounding (32-44, 7-12) had something to do with it. We also missed some crucial freethrows down the stretch.

Battle was in foul trouble most of the game, but did score 10 pts, with 3 asts in his 15 minutes.
Felts had 9 pts, 2 asts, 2 stls
Ike struggled on 5/18 shooting but still wound up with 16 pts, 4 asts, 7 rebs and 4 steals.
'Zilla was detemined in the post and led us with 18 pts. We needed more than 5 rebs from the big guy though.

Moore and Brown were only adequate in this one. We needed them to step up on the boards more.

We did get some very good play off the bench though

Sanders (9 pts, 3 rebs, 3 stls in 22 minutes), Madison(7 pts, 4 asts, 2 TO in 21 mins), and White(5 pts, 3 rebs in 9 minutes), all gave terrific efforts. Geisen played well enough too.

We shouldn't have lost this game, but did. Now we wait.

Final: G-W 79 CC 80 OT

[CoachC]

Mar 3: Unbelievable...bottom seed Radford pulled off another huge upset beating Liberty 71 - 67. This doesn't give the conference much credibility with the people that matter. Maybe the Radford boys need to be tested for steroids.

[CoachC]

Mar 4: The hosts finally end Radford's wild ride......barely. The Chanticleers win the tourney 89-88.

[CoachC]

Mar 5: Final RPIs for the Big South

Gardner-Webb 36
Liberty 48
VMI 72
Coastal Carolina 76
Presbyterian 101
High Point 152
Longwood 167
Winthrop 185
Campbell 258
Radford 288
UNCA 328
Charleston-Southern 344


College Insider has us as missing the bubble, which is probably true..unfair, but true. I would expect we'll be joining Liberty in the NIT, but nothing is guaranteed. Clearly VMI should be playing somewhere as well, but we'll see. History suggests that Presbyterian with their 101 RPI won't even be given a glance by the CIT.