Tomorrow night, the basketball season officially tips off at Matthews Arena.
At 7 p.m. the Northeastern men’s basketball team will take on Boston University in their season-opener.
Fans of the women’s team don’t have to wait much longer, as they will open Sunday on the road at Eastern Michigan University. After a three-game road trip, the women’s team will return to Boston for their home-opener at Solomon Court Nov. 20 , also against BU.
The men enter the 2012-13 season with modestly high expectations. They return four starters from last year’s team that went 9-9 in conference play and placed seventh in the Colonial Athletic Association’s (CAA) final standings. The preseason coaches’ poll this season predicted a fifth place finish in the CAA for the Huskies.
The important caveat to this optimism is that the preseason poll was conducted a few days before news broke of senior guard and Preseason First Team All-Conference selection Jonathan Lee’s foot injury. If there can be any good news in this situation, assuming his recovery fits the original timeline, the team’s leading scorer could be back on the court after the team wraps up at the Great Alaska Shootout in late November and will not likely miss any CAA games.
Even without Lee, the Huskies return starters from last year’s team, including veteran ball-handler Joel Smith and Quincy Ford, an All-CAA Rookie selection last season.
These two will have to assume the lead-scoring duties for the team in Lee’s absence. Smith will need to emerge as the team’s go-to scorer and shot taker while Ford needs to continue to develop into the big-man scoring threat the Huskies have desperately needed for years.
In addition to Lee’s injury, the Huskies will be without freshman forward Kwesi Abakah, who suffered a torn ACL and will miss the entire season.
Adding to the intrigue for the men’s season is the significantly diminished pool of eligible teams for the conference tournament. Because of low academic progress rates, UNC-Wilmington and Towson University are both ineligible for conference tournament play. Old Dominion University and Georgia State University also won’t appear in the CAA tournament tournament after announcing their departure following the season to Conference USA and the Sun Belt Conference, respectively.
Now, instead of eleven teams vying for the conference title and automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, there are just seven. The Huskies last NCAA tournament appearance was in 1991, but this year might be a perfect storm for them to end their drought.
The women’s basketball team looks to dramatically improve from their 2011-12 campaign, which saw them go 6-12 in-conference (8-22 overall) en route to a 10th-place finish in the CAA.
A silver lining from last year’s results was the way the Huskies closed out the season, winning four of their final six CAA games.
The CAA preseason polls expect the Huskies to be in the middle of the conference this season, with a predicted finish of sixth place.
This improvement is no doubt because of the expectations of the continued development of Preseason First Team All-Conference selection senior Deanna Kerkhof and preseason all-conference honorable mention junior Jewel Tunstull. Kerkhof was recently selected as Ontario Basketball 2012 Female Baller of the Year.
The team returns three of their four leading scorers from last season, Kerkhof, Tunstull and senior Christine Huber. Huber will see more minutes this season as a full-time starter and should be a major force for the Huskies in the paint, pulling down boards and giving them a consistent low-post scoring threat opposite Tunstull.
The Huskies benefit from opening their conference schedule with what should be “tune-up” games against George Mason University (preseason No. 7) and College of William & Mary (preseason No. 9) at home before facing preseason favorites James Madison University and University of Delaware in back-to-back games. These four early conference games should prove to be a good litmus test for the strength of the Huskies squad this season.
Perhaps it’s just the excitement of a new season getting the best of me, or the ever-eternal hope of potential NCAA tournament births, but I’m optimistic about the men’s and women’s basketball teams as they get ready to take the court in the next week.
As much as I love screaming “sieve” from the DogHouse, I’m ready to sit courtside and cheer among the squeaking of sneakers on the Matthews Arena floor.
– Dylan Lewis can be reached at [email protected]
