CAA's Top Teams set for Trask Tussle Thursday
UNCW, Towson set for matchup with championship implications
UNCW (18-7, 12-2) vs Towson (19-7, 10-3)
6 p.m. | Trask Coliseum | CBS Sports Network | Listen | Stats
With fewer than two weeks remaining in the regular season, the Seahawks can start closing the door, or the Tigers can blow it off the hinges and unleash chaos in the league.
Thanks to blessings from the Basketball Gods and a little scheduling luck, the two teams at the top of the CAA will square off on Thursday night in Trask Coliseum’s most significant game in five years.
Holding a 1.5-game lead in the standings and controlling its own destiny, UNCW can take a major step toward the program’s ninth regular-season title with a victory.
A Towson victory would vastly improve the Tigers’ chances for their first CAA crown — regular-season or tournament — and open the door a little wider for third-place Hofstra to complete a February rally.
Here’s what you should know for the CAA’s biggest game of the season, wiht students planning a white-out for the television audience.
KenPom rankings for UNCW: No. 192 overall, No. 166 Offense, No. 221 Defense.
KenPom rankings for Towson: No. 81 overall, No. 50 Offense, No. 132 Defense.
KenPom forecast: Towson 70, UNCW 66 (35 percent chance of victory).
When Last We Met…
Jan 22: UNCW 81, Towson 77 (OT)]
This comeback victory catapulted the Seahawks to new heights, as people began taking notice after UNCW rallied from a 12-point deficit to beat a first-place team on its home floor.
Per KenPom, the Hawks had a 2-percent chance of making the comeback around the time Coach Takayo Siddle simply wrote ‘TOUGH’ on his dry-erase board and asked his players to repeat it aloud.
UNCW dug in defensively, strung together a few stops and allowed Shykeim Phillips to carry them to overtime where Jaylen Fornes hit a huge shot to put it away, helping him establish himself as one of the league’s best Sixth-Man options.
The Seahawks surprisingly won the rebounding battle and feasted on second-chance points, outscoring the Tigers 22-13.
Bring the Fight
Towson is an experienced, physical team that wants to slow the game down for a talented roster that features a few guys that can create in the lane in Cam Holden and Terry Nolan, and several sharpshooters on the outside in Jason Gibson, Antonio Rizzuto and Nic Timberlake.
The Tigers will have revenge on their minds for what UNCW did to them last month, and they’d love nothing more than disrupting the Hawks’ path to the league crown in front of what should be a capacity crowd and national TV.
In Monday’s victory over William & Mary, the Seahawks didn’t have anything close to the energy, emotion or focus they’ll need to win this game.
But time and again this season, we’ve seen UNCW rise to the occasion when it needs to ramp it up for a big game, holding a 4-1 record against the four teams directly behind it in the standings.
There’s no reason to suggest the Hawks won’t get up for this one, but it’s important they don’t dig themselves the kind of hole we’ve seen several times this season, as the Towson offense is hard to stop once it gets rolling.
On the flip side, if the Trask crowd gets rolling, it could be a sticky situation for a Towson team that isn’t used to dealing with noise. Since the start of conference play, the highest attendance the Tigers have seen is 1,832.
(That’s incredibly lame — those kids deserve better.)
Be Us
The Hawks won the first matchup because they excelled at the things they do well:
Towson made 7 of 24 3-point attempts.
The Tigers committed 13 turnovers, with five of those being UNCW steals.
The Seahawks got 38 points in the paint, attempting 32 layups.
UNCW got 26 free throw attempts, including 12 for Jaylen Sims.
The Hawks limited themselves to seven turnovers, including two in the second half.
UNCW shot 6 of 21 from beyond the arc, including 3 of 8 in the second half.
Those details haven’t been areas where UNCW has been particularly strong recently, with five straight opponents scoring 70 or more point while averaging 11.8 turnovers.
Turnovers tend to be a marker of success in two ways — UNCW averages 19.4 points off turnovers in its CAA wins, as opposed to just 8 points in losses. Those turnovers also help fuel fastbreak points, where the Hawks are averaging 12.7 points in CAA wins vs. 6 in losses.
Given Towson’s preferred pace, it’ll be important to speed up the temp and get them uncomfortable, and luckily for UNCW, it is well equipped to match up with all of the offensive firepower the Tigers can put on the floor.
Seahawk 3-point attempts are the most interesting trend as of late. As more opponents mix in zone defense, pack the lane and dare UNCW to put up 3-point attempts, they’ve averaged 23.4 attempts (46/117) over that five-game stretch, including three games over 25.
In the seven CAA games before that, UNCW had attempted 18.9 per game (48/132), which is more in line with the range Siddle often references.
Honor Roles
These days, you can pretty much count on two of UNCW’s big three (Sims, Phillips and Mike Okauru) having big offensive performances in any given game.
What’s separated the Seahawks from the league, however, have been the likes of Fornes, James Baker Jr. and Jamahri Harvey finding their way into double digits.
At Towson the first time around, Baker (10), Harvey (12) and Fornes (13) played well on an efficient afternoon, as they combined to go 13 of 29 from the floor with five 3-pointers.
That’s where things went sideways on Monday for UNCW, as that trio combined for 10 points, all of which were scored by Baker. Fornes was 0/10 from the field while Harvey missed all three of his shots in five minutes.
With those guys putting up their usual numbers, it’s an entirely different game, and the Seahawks cruise to a win.
Baker has been playing some of the best basketball of his college career lately, Fornes has been a little off since going back into the starting lineup for the past two games, while Harvey hasn’t scored in the 26 minutes he’s played over the past three games.
Fornes and Harvey are both big-time, two-way players for UNCW, and should make a big impact tonight.
Jaylen Sims!
This is just a note about how freaking good he’s been lately.
Sometimes it feels like we’re taking this for granted because it seems so effortless, or other guys have hit big buckets late in games.
That shouldn’t take away from the fact that Sims, who has only been running the point for about 16 games now, has put up 53 points — 16/28 from the field, including 6 of 10 from 3-point range — over the past two games.
As he’s gotten used to the position, he’s really grown into the role and understands how to use his body and changing speeds to create the space he needs to get shots off. There’s also been a been a clear step in shot selection, as he knows his sweet spots and gets to them early and often.
Add elite rebounding rate for a guard and low turnover percentage, and he’s really doing great things every time out there.