I tend to agree on Cam in the starting lineup. I get liking the spark of the bench and that it has been working, but having the best all-around player on your team come off the bench as a general thought process doesn't make much sense. I do see what Skerry is trying to do in terms of having a way to raise the level of player with the first subs, but I am not sure they trade-off works against really good teams. My hunch is if it works against Hofstra on Thursday, it may be here to stay.
Out of all of the teams we have played three times or more since last year, William & Mary is the one we have shredded the most:
William & Mary 86 ppg (3 games), Charleston 76 ppg (3 games), Hofstra 74.7 ppg (3 games), Northeastern 65.8 ppg (4 games), Drexel 63.7 ppg (3 games) and Delaware 63.3. ppgs (4 games). Anecdotally it feels like some of our best offensive games of the Skerry area have come against William and Mary (of course our biggest tournament clunker came against them too).
Hofstra's win at Charleston really opens things up in the conference. We beat Hofstra by an average of 11 ppg last year and obviously won by 21 at home earlier this year. Hopefully, the trend keeps up. We handled them in Long Island last year, but it took probably the best game of Timberlake's career.
This team definitely deserves credit for taking care of business over the last six games. Hofstra lost to NC A&T at home and UNC-Wilmington lost to this William & Mary team so it is harder than it seems. As I look at the standings, our loss to Delaware is in the same category as UNC-Wilmington's loss to William & Mary even thought it doesn't feel that way because Delaware is a tough match up for us.
In the top four, Hofstra is now 2-1 (win at Charleston, win vs. UNC-W, loss at Towson), Charleston is 2-1 (win at Towson, win at UNC-W, loss vs. Charleston), Towson 1-1 (loss vs. Charleston, win vs. Hofstra), UNC-W 0-2 (loss vs. Charleston, loss at Hofstra). Charleston doesn't go to Hofstra this year, Hofstra doesn't get to host Charleston or travel to UNC-W again, we only play UNC-W once on the road, and UNC-W doesn't play at home against Hofstra or on the road against us. It also looks like the bottom feeders are starting to get more competitive with Elon beating Drexel and Monmouth taking down NC A&T yesterday.
Like I said earlier this week, it feels like 5-3 gets us in the top four. It really feels like if we want to grab the top seed 7-1 is what we have to do and 6-2 would maybe give us an outside shot if there are some upsets. That being said as good as we have played there are a lot of tough games left on the slate and there are a lot of different outcomes out there. Right now, it is just nice to see how this team has responded to the Delaware loss. Hopefully, we can keep it up.