By Jake Fischer, News Correspondent
If any questions still lingered about senior co-captain Joel Smith’s health, they were answered Wednesday night. Smith, the men’s basketball team’s leading scorer, poured in 29 points to go with nine rebounds and swatted two shots against the Georgia State University Panthers.
When the team traveled to Atlanta to take on the Panthers, the outright Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) regular season conference title was on the line. The Huskies had already locked up at least a share of the championship and the No. 1 seed in the CAA Tournament, but still needed another victory to be the only team in the CAA to raise a banner this season.
Fortunately for head coach Bill Coen and company, they were able to defeat the Panthers, 90–84 in overtime, to clinch sole-possession of the regular season championship and at least an automatic bid to the NIT Championship this postseason.
The victory extended the Huskies’ record in CAA overtime games this season to 4-1 and will allow the coaching staff to rest their starters and key players on Saturday against Old Dominion University if they so choose.
Northeastern (19-10, 14-3) beat GSU by sticking to what has been a winning formula all season: exceptional guard play and a big performance from an unsung hero. Smith, along with his starting mates on the perimeter, Jonathan Lee, Quincy Ford and David Walker, combined for 67 of the team’s 90 points on 42.3 percent shooting from the field.
“Those guards are just so good,” Georgia State head coach Ron Hunter told reporters after the game regarding Northeastern’s play. “At the end of it all, it comes down to the little things. We just didn’t make foul shots down the stretch and they did.”
The Huskies didn’t just make some foul shots down the stretch; as a team, Northeastern drilled all of its 27 free throw attempts throughout the contest. That number set a CAA men’s basketball record for most free throws by a team without a miss in a single game. Ford did not attempt a free throw in the outing, and his streak of 31-consecutive free throws remained intact.
In this contest, the unsung hero stood 6’5” and is only a freshman. But Zach Stahl came off the bench and produced on both the offensive and defensive end. He scored 12 points on 3-4 shooting from the field and 4-4 from the charity stripe. But, he also proved monumental in the paint defensively, consistently battling with 6’10” GSU senior James Vincent.
The Huskies will not play a game with postseason implications until Saturday, March 10 when they take on the winner of the first round matchup between the No. 4 seed and No. 5 seed in the conference tournament in Richmond, Va.
With the top seed, the Huskies will receive a first round bye in this year’s end of season classic that features just seven teams. After Virginia Commonwealth University left what was a 12-team CAA conference for the Atlantic 10 conference last spring, both Old Dominion University and Georgia State have made plans to realign and leave the CAA following this season — making them ineligible for the tournament.
Additionally, both Towson University and University of North Carolina-Wilmington failed to meet Academic Progress Rates last season and are also ineligible. The absence of those five teams have made the conference tournament field that much thinner, but head coach Bill Coen said he isn’t not to take it for granted.
“This league is just so competitive,” Coen said following the team’s double-overtime victory over the College of William & Mary on Jan. 23. “Every team knows what we try to do and we know what every other team likes to do. Anyone can win in this conference on any given night.”
Now it’s up to Coen and company to win two games next weekend, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
