Think big. That’s what the Northeastern men’s basketball team will have to do as they prepare for their inaugural season in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA).
The Huskies’ margin for error will be slim when they enter conference play Dec. 3 at James Madison, as CAA teams are known to play stingy defense.
Entering his fifth season at the helm of the men’s basketball program, coach Ron Everhart will try to improve his team’s win total for the fourth straight season.
Here’s how they break down:
Backcourt
Jose Juan Barea will run Everhart’s offense for the fourth consecutive year. The senior point guard was selected to the CAA Pre-Season All-Conference first team this year and is the most crucial component in the Husky machine. He is a fiery floor general with a special knack for filling the bucket.
His scoring average has risen each year and he’s coming off one of the best seasons in recent college basketball memory. He was eighth in the nation in points per game with 22.6 and fifth in assists with 7.6, becoming the first player since 1998 to rank in the top 10 in both categories.
Aaron Davis will be counted on to up his scoring total now that he is finally 100 percent healthy (he has been plagued with shoulder trouble since 2002).
Bobby Kelly is again expected to be the third man in Everhart’s three-guard set. A high-flying fan favorite, Kelly knows how to throw down the back end of a Barea alley-oop, but will have to shoot the ball more often this year.
The best teams in the CAA don’t overwhelm you with offense; they strangle teams with tight defense. If the Huskies want to win games, they will have to spread the ball around.
“When you talk about good teams, you’re normally talking about teams that defend very well. All in all, we’ll have to work extra hard offensively to create opportunities for ourselves and defensively we are gonna have to sit down and lock up like we’ve never done before,” Everhart said. “This league is physical and they really defend.”
Forwards
The question is how Shawn James, who set the school’s single-season block record with 136 and was second in the nation with a 5.4 blocks per game average, and the rest of the Huskies will adjust to the beefier big men in the CAA.
“I hope [we have the bodies to match up with the big men of the CAA] and if not that we have the quickness upfront to counteract the kind of physicality we’re going to see,” Everhart said.
The Huskies will look for some solid rebounding from 6-foot-10 freshman Benson Egemonye. Everhart said the Benin City, Nigeria, native is an impressive rebounder and brings a physical presence unseen at Northeastern during the Everhart era.
Add to the list junior forward Bennet Davis, who looked great in the exhibition season and will be counted on to score from the low post.
They’ve been picked to finish sixth in the conference and that could be a blessing in disguise.
“I know the league is very good. Quite frankly, [being picked No. 6] is still kind of flattering to me,” Everhart said. “But obviously we want to go in and show them that they are wrong about us and that we are better than No. 6.”
The Huskies could surprise a few conference foes who aren’t familiar with their game, and shouldn’t be counted out as a potential top-three team heading into the conference tournament.
“From a coaching perspective, we’re going to treat the Colonial like any other league we’ve competed in,” Everhart said. “Our goal is to be playing for a championship and making it to the NCAA tournament.”
