The character Scotty Smalls, from the movie “The Sandlot,” displayed just how hard it is being the new kid in town. Luckily for the Northeastern men’s basketball team, it doesn’t have to face a baseball-eating dog named “The Beast” to earn respect of its new peers.
Instead, the Huskies simply have to win some basketball games and play competitively in their first year as members of the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). And that’s exactly what they did last week, winning two CAA conference games at home against Delaware and Drexel.
Saturday’s tilt against the Drexel Dragons (9-8, 3-3 CAA) was more than just a matchup of two teams in the middle of the conference leaderboard; it was also a matchup of two of the top co-op schools in the country, according to U.S. News and World Reports.
The Huskies (9-6, 5-2 CAA) won a 63-60 thriller in their first game against Drexel as members of the CAA and improved to 11-25 against the Dragons all-time.
“I think it’s up to us to put ourselves in a position where we are looked at as being one of ‘the guys’ in the CAA,” head coach Ron Everhart said. “Obviously, for us, a win like this against a team as good as Drexel is a big step in that direction.”
After a Chaz Crawford layup gave Drexel the 60-58 lead with 52 seconds remaining, the crowd at Matthews Arena went silent. The Huskies needed a bucket on their next possession or they would have to start fouling in order to stop the clock. The Dragons made sure senior guard Jose Juan Barea wouldn’t be taking the final shot for NU, so the senior co-captain dished the ball to sophomore forward Shawn James who calmly hit a clutch, game-winning three pointer.
“As I’m quickly finding out, this was a typical CAA war,” Everhart said. “It was really a battle out there.”
The Huskies were led by the scorching-hot shooting of senior guard Aaron Davis, who scored a season-high 21 points and grabbed a career-high nine rebounds. Since the 10-minute mark of the Old Dominion game on Jan. 7, Davis, has not missed a three-point shot, going 6-for-6 in the two games since. Overall, he is shooting 75 percent from the floor over that span and is becoming the complementary wing threat the coaching staff asked him to be at the start of the season.
“It’s coach telling me I gotta get in the gym,” Davis said. “I’ve been in the gym after practice the past couple days and obviously it’s paying off.”
Finishing with a season-low 13 points, only his third sub-20-point performance of the season, Barea failed to become just the third player in the history of NU basketball to score 2,000 career points. Husky legends Reggie Lewis (2,709) and Pete Harris (2,167) are the only others to accomplish that feat. He needs one point in his next game to join Lewis and Harris.
While he didn’t reach that career milestone and actually fell just one assist shy of 600 for his career with seven, Barea had what could easily be considered one of his best games of the season.
His shots weren’t falling – he was 3-for-13 for the game – but his leadership on the court was instrumental in the Husky win.
“I think Jose played a great all-around game,” Everhart said. “I think his seven assists probably all came at times when we needed them the most.”
His most crucial play came with the game tied, 58-58, late in the second half.
With just 1:47 remaining in the game, Barea dove head first for a loose ball on the defensive end of the floor and managed to get the ball to Davis before slamming into press row. The Dragons immediately cornered Davis, trying to force a turnover, but Barea popped up and called time-out before they could do any damage.
“Obviously, I am very pleased with our hustle plays down in the end,” Everhart said. “We stayed tough, we stayed together and we made big plays down the stretch.”
On Thursday, the Huskies won another nail-biter when they defeated Delaware (4-10, 0-5 CAA), 73-71, at Matthews Arena.
Barea led the way for NU with 20 points and seven assists, as four Huskies reached double figures in scoring.
James, marred by foul trouble, managed eight points, eight rebounds and five blocked shots in 21 minutes of action. Aaron Davis was dependable from three-point land, hitting both his attempts and finishing with 13 points.
Janon Cole was big off the bench, scoring 12 points and pulling down eight rebounds in 26 minutes on the floor.
The Blue Hens’ leading scorer, Harding Nana, scored 24 points and grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds in the losing effort.
The Huskies travel to Virginia Thursday for their next game against George Mason, who beat them at home on Jan. 2, 71-68. After that, they return home to Huntington Avenue Saturday for a 1 p.m. tilt against Hofstra.
