College of Charleston (18-7, 10-3)
Davidson (17-7, 12-1)
TD Arena
Tipoff at 7:30 pm on ESPN3
The last time these two teams met, January 19th in Davidson, the Cougars were coming off a road loss to Georgia Southern and playing their final game of a tough five-games-in-nine-days stretch. The Cougars played well for all but about the final five minutes of the first half but it wasn't enough to gut out a victory. Since that meeting neither team has lost a game. The Cougars will look to exact a bit of revenge on the Wildcats and for Davidson, the College is the last roadblock in possibly winning out in the Southern Conference. It all adds up to a little more than the average Valentines Day drama level at the College of Charleston.
Back to that last game these two teams played against one another. Things started off well for the Cougars but they encountered some issues that would throw them off balance. For one, Anthony Stitt was still in that awful road shooting slump- going 0-8 from the field against the Wildcats. Second was the quick exit of most of our formidable front court. Baru picked up two quick fouls that would see him only play limited minutes and tally a season low of just 2 rebounds. Our second leading rebounder, Willis Hall caught an elbow to the eye/face/head that would cause him to miss most of the game with a Psycho-T injury. With Baru, Hall and Anthony Thomas all in foul trouble for better parts of the game, Davidson dominated the boards 31-23.
A negative rebounding disparity like that has been a rarity this year for the Cougars. One has to think Andrew Lawrence will not lead the team with 5 rebounds again tomorrow night. It's also unlikely Sunny D will come off the bench and torch Davidson for 8 points in 12 minutes again. But that is neither here nor there (do it for the student section Matty).
There a couple big keys for the Cougs tomorrow in order to defend their home court again from the Wildcats.
- Stay out of foul trouble
- For obvious reasons 1) CofC is going to have their hands full maintaining the rebounding margin against Cohen/Brooks (maybe the only SoCon tandem that matches up with the Cougars). Baru and Hall picking up early fouls and being forced to sit will not help to keep the Cats off the offensive or defensive glass. In their big losses this year Davy has been out-rebounded bad 2) The last thing any team wants to do is send the nations best free throw shooting program (81% as a team this year) to the line for easy points
- Drive and kick
- One chink in the armor of McKillop's team this year is containing penetration off the dribble. Kuhlman and Cochran don't have the lateral quickness to stay with quick guards and they'll have a tough matchup with Stitt and Lawrence. There's two ways to penetrate the defense, off the bounce or dumping it into the post. Baru and Wiedeman will probably see a few double teams so if the guards and AT can get to the rim they should be able to finish or dish it to someone else who's open. So either our shooters get wide open looks, our guards beat the defense off the dribble or (maybe best case scenario) Brooks/Cohen pick up some early fouls trying to rotate over.
- Stop the transition game
- This is what Coach Wojcik touched on immediately after the game in January and in this week's podcast. Davidson has the tendency to sneak out behind a defense right after they force a turnover or missed shot. Even their big men run the floor. The best way to prevent this would be to not miss shots or to not turn the ball over. But regardless of how well the Cougars shoot, someone needs to be back to prevent Davidson from outlet passing to a wide open man who leaked out.
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