Game! Of! The! Night! 12/18/2007: Elon at Chattanooga
Elon at Chattanooga (SoCon) Tonight in the grand old Southern Conference, we have two league-undefeated teams going at it. The Phoenix and Mocs are both 5-4 overall, but Chattanooga has won its first three of its 20-game SoCon schedule, while Elon has swept its initial pair of league tilts. So something's gotta give... and it'll probably be Chattanooga's offense. The Mocs give it up on 26.4 percent of their possessions, and there are only 15 teams more generous. Despite the cheap cliché-turn, John Shulman's bunch has certainly taken advantage of the possessions it does see to completion. There might not be a better frontcourt in the league, leading the SoCon in rebounding at 36.8 per game, and the team is hitting 58 percent of all of its two-point baskets (that's seventh in the land). You can thank 6-7 junior Nicchaeus Doaks for a lot of that, he's averaging 12.6 ppg and 6.4 rpg. The Mocs bullied their way to easy wins over the two Charleston schools (The Citadel and the College), and came within six points of beating Tennessee at McKenzie in a rarer-than-rare home shot at Big Orange. Then there's Elon. We're doing some reading up on the Phoenix in advance of our nonconference date at the Palestra on Thursday, and we may be catching up on some newspapers during that game. Elon has been able to gut out wins against Western Carolina, Wofford and Furman in the early going by playing at a punishingly slow pace, 32-second possessions that usually end in an Ola Atoyebi basket. The big Chicagoan is averaging 15.1 ppg and 8.3 rpg, and most notably put up an impressive 20-and-12 double-double in a losing effort at Georgia. Frontcourt against frontcourt, who ya got? |
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