SoCon Opener: CofC vs El Cid

A VMI cheerleader catches a knob hanging outside the all girls dorm

College of Charleston (5-1, 0-0)

Shitadel (2-3, 0-0)

TD Arena

Tipoff at 8pm on ESPN3

What better way to start off conference play than by hosting our crosstown rival? As much as it pains me to say it, I'm actually gonna miss rooting against the likes of Cameron Wells, Zach Urbanus and company this year. They were solid players and the basketball rivalry between Citadel and CofC is at its best when both teams are competitive in the Southern Conference. 

Like the Cougars, the Bulldogs of El Cid are also rebuilding; albeit on a whole different level. They have  eight freshman on the roster and are still adjusting to 2nd year coach Driesel's style of play. They are led by junior center Mike Groselle, who in my opinion, has been the biggest surprise in the Southern conference so far. He leads the team in both points (18.2) and rebounds (11.2) per game. I can only guess that after he got abused by Simmons last year (skip to the 3:14 mark of the video here), Big Mikey spent countless hours watching game tape of Noah Dahlman to hone his skills. He's made great strides in his back to the basket game and rebounding positioning and has been the lone bright spot in the Citadel's losses to Clemson, VMI and High Point.


Groselle will have to be the focus of the Cougars defensive game plan this week and the front line will have their hands full. Better hope Wiedeman and Baru don't get some early foul calls or we'll be watching helplessly from the sidelines as Carlton and Sundberg desperately try to draw a charge. More than the post players though, I want to see how Jordan Scott plays. No one really knew what to expect from him when the season began and he started this year looking like he might be our best player. He's cooled off significantly since then and has failed to score more than two points in three of the last four games. Now he has Anthony Stitt pushing him out of the starting spot and stealing his minutes. We know he has the potential, let's see how he responds to the adversity.


If Wiedeman and Baru can stay out of foul trouble and Wiggins doesn't go into another slump, the Cougs should win this one easily. Coach Cremins knows the importance of conference games and I'm sure the coaching staff has gotten the team pumped for tomorrows game. The Cougars are coming in with some momentum and returning to a rocking TD Arena should help them get their first conference victory. Go Cougars!

Battle 4 Atlantis Wrap Up

Like I mentioned at the end of yesterdays post, I didn't get to watch most of the UCF game or any of the UNCA game. I have however looked at the boxscores, read the game summaries and read the comments on cofcfans.com. Based on those sources, there are a few things we learned from each game.

Central Florida

• When Wiggins struggles, so does the team
•  The Cougars' leading scorer and lone senior had his worst game of the season as he was held to just six shots and ended with a grand total of two points. 'Twaine has come a long way from his knuckleball-shooting, wannabe point guard days as a freshamn to lead the Cougs this season. He's really put it together this year and continues to be a matchup nightmare for opposing players. The offense doesn't necessarily flow through Wiggins, but I think there was a bit of uneasiness amongst the team when he wasn't getting it going.
• This team would be in a rough spot if Baru had been ruled ineligible 
• I hate to return to such a dated topic, but when Baru sits early with foul trouble, like he did against UCF, you see how easy it is to dominate the Cougars inside. Trent played his best game of the weekend against the Knights but he was facing an uphill battle as the frontline of UCF (particularly Keith Clanton) had a field day against Sundberg and Carlton
• When the back of your jersey says "Jordan" you'll get some preferential treatment from the refs
• Gotta live with that one
• Rebounding was weak this game, but it will be just fine by Socon standards
• Before the season even started we knew that rebounding and defense would be our strengths this year. We were obliterated on the boards 25-44 (partly due to Baru's one rebound in 13 minutes) by the Knights and it resulted in many second chance scoring opportunities for them, particularly down the stretch. I don't believe there are many teams in the Socon who will be able to out-rebound us come March
• This loss looked a lot better the next day when UCF defeated UConn. Still wish it could've been us though.

UNC Asheville

• Not every game the Cougars play starts with a great first half and ends with us holding on to the lead
• Asheville was in this game from the beginning, at the half and in the end. The Cougar Cubs showed a lot of resilience and maturity by refusing to fold like they did against UCF and dropping to 0-2 in the Bahamas.
• Wiggins can bounce back
• After going for 2 points against the Knights, Antwaine scored 23 points to lead the Cougars on Friday. He also nailed eight straight points down the stretch. Like I said earlier, comparing his game now to that of his freshman year is unbelievable. 
• Adjehi Baru has an offensive game
• Beyond alley-oops and elbow jumpers! Baru's back-to-the-basket game is coming along slowly but surely as he still faces that huge jump in talent from 1A high school ball to D1 college ball. Against UNCA, Adjehi had his highest scoring output of the season with 14 points and still contributed seven rebounds.
• That Anthony Stitt sure is talented, one of these days he's gonna have a breakout game.
• Didn't know it would be the next day

UMass

• Remember when we kept having players cramping up in the exhibition games? 
• That is hopefully a problem of the past as the Cougars' seven man rotation was able to hang with the ten man rotation of UMass in the run-and-gun first half. In fact, Lawrence and Wiggins looked like they could've kept playing when they were sitting on the bench, despite playing 35 minutes each.
• This was a stat I found interesting but encouraging: This game was just the second time this season that the Cougars have outscored their opponent in the second half (the other was against Morehead when we scored 35 and allowed 32)
• Perhaps the comeback issues we had with Holy Cross and Clemson never come back to bite us in the butt

Overall I'd call the Battle 4 Atlantis a success for the Cougars. The loss to UCF was unfortunate but I would rather have that than have an overconfident CofC team lose the upcoming conference opening swing at TD Arena. The team and coaching staff learned a little more about who they are and we fans got to see the Cougs play some legit competition.

Baru's Dunk Against UMass

For those of you without access to HDNet, here is my bootleg version of the Stitt to Baru alley-oop that blew the roof off Imperial Arena. No need to remind you, but they are both freshman...

Cougs Leave Bahamas 2-1 After Dismantling UMass

Final Score: College of Charleston 85, UMass 61

Top Performers: Anthony Stitt 23 points, 8 assists, 3 steals

Slams and jams! 

Shooting guards the size of centers!

Matt Sundberg getting hot from downtown!

It's college basketball on HDNet!

In one of the most bizarre games I've seen in years, the College of Charleston Cougars wrapped up their Thanksgiving stay in the Bahamas with a 24-point drubbing of the UMass Minutemen. Anthony Stitt had the best game of his short college career and led the Cougars to a winning record and 5th place finish in the Battle 4 Atlantis. 

Despite having access to HDNet for almost four years, this was the first time I ever watched the programming; let alone a basketball game. And let me just say the experience did not disappoint. From player introductions that did not feature Andrew Lawrence, to color commentary gems like "Sundberg is one of those special players that always finds himself in the right place at the right time." Other highlights included a plug for a live Smash Mouth concert and an interview with the Archduke of Bahaman Sports and Culture (or something like that). One of play-by-play callers also sang into the microphone during the second half.

The entertainment value of the game's first half was most likely the cause of the commentator orgasm taking place on the sidelines. The 5th place game was marketed as the surefire, most compelling, edge-of-your seat, high scoring game-to-be of the entire tournament. For the first half it lived up to its billing.

With the exception of their minute man running the point (pun severely intended), the Minutemen had anywhere from 7 to 15 tall, lanky wing players who rotated in and out of play. In the first half, UMass infused their style of play into the game and set a track meet sort of pace. They were getting out in transition and finished just about every possession with a dunk. The Minutemen's movement on offense was getting Trent and Adjehi out of position and they were taking advantage. However, the Cougars can run and gun if that's what you want to do. We were able to go punch for punch with UMass behind the perimeter play of Andrew Lawrence and Anthony Stitt (who alone shot 5-8 from three for the game). 

I think UMass' strategy coming into last nights game was to use their athleticism and depth to their advantage and wear the Cougars seven man rotation down. That was how the game was played in the first half and CofC found themselves up by four. The second half was when we put them away. When the Cougars slowed the tempo down and settled into a zone defense, it forced the Minutemen to execute their offense more traditionally. They had to think about shot selection and weren't able to get the alley-oops and outside shooting going. UMass finished the game shooting 4-28 from three and nothing seemed to go their way down the stretch.

Anthony Stitt was phenomenal in this game. He ran the offense proficiently (he mostly ran point even with Lawrence in the game) and showed an outside shooting touch many of us thought was lacking from his game. Antwaine Wiggins also had his second solid game of the tournament by matching Stitt's 23 points and doing his thing on defense. To me the most disappointing performance of the night came from James Carlton. This was the type of game for him to really have an impact. The fact that the game was up tempo and a blowout at the end should have insured more than 6 minutes for JC. But once again he kept disappearing on offense and Coach went with Sundberg. Not to mention JC also nearly got a T for delivering a hard elbow that got him reamed out bad by Cremins. Matt responded to his opportunity by getting his shots from outside and finishing with 12 points.

Even though we didn't get our dream matchup against UConn or FSU thanks to our first round loss, finishing the trip 2-1 should instill some more confidence into the young guys. Now the Cougars will travel back to Charleston to begin conference play with a matchup against rival Citadel at TD Arena. So far we have seen great individual performances from Wiedeman, Wiggins,  Lawrence, Stitt and Adjehi but we have yet to see them all put it together in one game. The Citadel is young but they have a ton of talent. I'll be at the game and I would very much like for us to decimate the Cadets in our first conference game.

*Due to Thanksgiving travel I missed the Asheville game and most of the UCF game. Im going to accumulate what I can and put together a brief Battle 4 Atlantis summary tomorrow

Battle 4 Atlantis Game 1: CofC vs UCF

College of Charleston (3-0, 0-0)
University of Central Florida (2-1, 0-0)
Imperial Arena, Paradise Island Bahamas
Tipoff Thursday at 2pm on Versus


The first game of the first ever Battle 4 Atlantis tournament pits the UCF Knights against the Cougars on Thanksgiving Day. I'm probably going to have to record this game because my extended family is gonna elect to watch the Packers-Lions game over the first round of some new college basketball tournament.

When it was announced that this would be our first game of the tournament, I knew exactly two things about the UCF Knights. The first is that one of Michael Jordan's sons, Marcus Jordan, is on the team. The other piece of information I drew upon was that I remembered them being nationally ranked last year, but they didn't make it to the Big Dance. I looked at last years results and sure enough this was in fact the case. The Knights started last year by winning 14 straight games (including wins over UF and Miami) and earning a national ranking, before they collapsed and lost 8 straight. They finished the year 19-11 and made it to the semi-finals if the CBI (the postseason tourney we played in a few years ago).

From what little I've been able to gather about the Knights, they are balanced offensively and are very athletic. Macus Jordan and forward Keith Clanton lead the team in points with about 16 per game apiece. Three other players also average double figures this year. Just by watching video on the team you can see the athleticism. They're high flying, dunk a lot and score in transition. However, they're team field goal percentage this year is a paltry .396% (the Cougars have shot .497 this year).

The Knights are 2-1 coming into this contest, with lopsided wins over St Thomas University and Holy Cross. Their lone loss on the season was an absolute drubbing by #24 Florida State in Tallahassee (consequently, FSU is also in the Battle 4 Atlantis).

My take on UCF is that they're a lot like another team in our own conference: Chattanooga. Both the Mocs and the Knights have a team of athletes who can run, jump and dunk. This can put you at an advantage over a lot of teams and I think that's what happened at the beginning of last season for the Knights. They were able to out-hustle their opponents. But as the Mocs are finding out, athleticism only gets you so far. My guess is that once UCF got to conference play last year, their regular opponents figured them out and were able to force them to play a more coordinated style of offense.

The Knights are not a great shooting team (.235 from 3 for the team) and this consequently has lead them to score only about 70 points per game this year. The Cougars should be able to hold them at or below that number and get a victory on Thanksgiving Day. This CofC team is brimming with confidence but I think Cremins has them focused on the task at hand. As I mentioned after the Clemson game, we'll go another layer deeper in seeing what this team is made of. They can either build off of what they've done so far, learn from their 2nd half mistakes and move forward OR they let their egos get out of hand and supply us fans with the first loss of the season. I for one want to see us play Florida State and UConn. But I'll be thankful as long as the Cougs give it their all. Go Cougars!

Cougars Depart for Bahamas

Earlier today, the Cougars left Charleston to begin their journey to the Bahamas for the inaugural Battle 4 Atlantis basketball tournament. 

The only guaranteed matchup right now is that the Cougars will play UCF Thanksgiving Day at 2pm on Versus. The other teams in the bracket include: Florida State, Harvard, UMass, UNC Asheville, Utah and 2011 National Champion UConn.

Here's a video preview of the tournament with Coach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MlhwDDfRTc&feature=channel_video_title 

Cougars Hold On, Defeat Clemson at LittleJohn

Trent literally looks like a giant in this picture

Final Score: College of Charleston 72, Clemson 69
Top Performers: Lots of praise to go around here, Wiggins led the way with 22 points and 7 rebounds, Wiedeman and Lawrence had 15 each and Baru and Stitt played some great D down the stretch

Full Game (for a limited time)            Box Score


Yesterday was not a good day to be a Clemson fan. For the better part of the afternoon, the Tigers football team was getting abused by the NC State Wolfpack. Right around the end of the game, the College of Charleston Cougars were up 16 in Littlejohn Coliseum. If you're interested in seeing a bunch of grown men cry over their programs' simultaneous implosion from BCS and NCA Tournament aspirations, I recommend visiting one of Clemson's sports forums.

Back to the game itself. Because of the Saturday evening time slot, the crowd at Littlejohn was sparse and both the fans and the players seemed to come out with little energy. The Cougars jumped out to an early double-digit lead behind a turnover-creating defense and some strong offensive play by Antwaine, Andrew and Trent. Momentum continued to carry through the first half as the Cougars put the pedal to the floor and really looked like a veteran team on both ends of the floor. Cremins called it "as good a half of basketball as any team I've ever coached". In the first half the Cougars held the Tigers to 24 points, 36.7% shooting and forced 9 turnovers.

In the second half we witnessed a whole different Clemson team. They came out with energy and intensity, got the crowd back into the game, straightened up on defense and began to chip away at the lead. Devin Booker led the charge (he finished with 16pts and 14 rebs) by attacking the offensive glass and getting some second chance baskets. The Cougars held on for dear life and were able to get baskets when they needed them. The lead was cut to as little as 2 in the final minutes before our freshman came up big. With 21 seconds left, Baru had a huge block on Andre Young's layup attempt and Wiggins quickly recovered the ball. Antwaine passed ahead to Stitt who faced one man in the open court and drove to the basket to draw the foul. Stitt shot one-for-two from the line and the Tigers had one last semi-open look from Young whose three point attempt clanged off the rim.

Game, Blouses.

More thoughts after the jump