Cougars Look to Sink Midshipmen

College of Charleston (4–3, 0–0)
Navy (3–4, 0–0)
TD Arena
7:30 on MyTV Charleston

I was fortunate enough to attend last year’s game against Navy in Annapolis. The Cougars were able to silence the tens of Midshipmen basketball fans in attendance to pick up their second win of the year, largely on the outside shooting of Canyon Barry, Evan Bailey and Marquise Pointer.

This time around, Barry is gone, Bailey and Pointer are shooting a combined 18% from distance and — perhaps related — Charleston is struggling to score. Fortunately, the Naval Academy is not an offensive juggernaut either. In all likelihood this game will be an endurance test in shot selection, possession protection and rebounding.

The guy in blue to keep your eye on is Shawn Anderson — a junior guard who leads the team in both scoring and rebounding. He also hit the go-ahead shot in the final seconds of a win over Penn last week. Last year against the Cougars he lit up the boxscore for 21 points and 6 boards in a 72–58 defeat.

That final score from last year is ironic, because it follows the blueprint that Coach Grant laid out three days ago for how his team should perform every game. That is, score in the 70’s, and hold the opponent below 60.

The latter part should be easy, but the 70 point mark is a threshold that the Cougars have only reached in 3 of 7 games this season. Coach Grant raised some eyebrows on Sunday when he reiterated that he has a “great” shooting team this season. That may seem overly optimistic, but it’s not a stretch given that Pointer and Bailey shot above 33% from deep last season and the team added Chealey and Riller. We just have not seen it yet.

If the majority of the team is in a sustained shooting slump, tonight would be a good time to break out of it. Navy will make the Cougars work for every point, and then Charleston has a quick turnaround before hosting a very good Davidson team on Sunday.