Game! Of! The! Night! 12/2/2009: Wofford at Western Carolina
Wofford at Western Carolina (Southern)
Ramsey Center - Cullowhee, NC
7:30 EST
Let's see if I remember how to do this. There's a game, there's a night, a preposition and a bunch of exclamation marks... easy enough, I suppose. Our make-believe G!O!T!N! production crew is off to the hills of Carolina tonight, where they'll get in the 'Whee and bring you an early Southern Conference matchup involving a pair of teams that made quiet improvements in 2008-09 in the 6-2 shadow of Stephen Curry, and who may step forward to contend in his absence. The homestanding Catamounts (5-1) turned in one of Hoops Nation's less-heralded turnarounds last season, turning a disastrous 10-21 campaign marked with player defections and offensive disarray into a decent little 16-15 record that included an 11-9 mark and a No. 2 seed in the SoCon's NorDiv. WCU has busted out of the gate with a a 5-1 record with two non-D1 victories, but there's a little four-game winning streak going that includes W's over Duquesne and Gardner-Webb, as well as a 29-pointer over D1-1/2 Binghamton. If the Cats were medicine, they'd be grape-flavored expectorant; with 21.2 turnovers forced per game, they're fourth in the nation in caused coughups.
Visiting the Ramsey Center tonight are the Wofford Terriers (4-2), who jumped from 8-12 to 12-8 in the Southern Conference last season, and they already have an RLU to their name, beating Georgia in the first week of the season. Then the Woofs went to Bradley, shot just 33%, but came within two. Out in Las Vegas at a neutral site tournament, they slew the Seattle menace, something that Utah and Fresno State were unable to do. It's definitely a team to keep an eye on, and it succeeds in the way so many sub-Red Liners do, by way of ball control. At just 11.3 turnovers per game, the Terriers are Division I's 36th-best handle-wielders, and they'll get a stiff test tonight against Western's grabby D. Look out for 6-6 junior Noah Dahlman, last year's breakout Wofford whooper. He's scoring 18 ppg and is coming off a 23 point, 10-rebound dub-squared against Seattle.
