LIVE NSU AUDIO | LIVE FSC STREAMING | LIVE STATS
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team finishes up the 2015-16 regular season on the road Saturday, with postseason seeding up in the air pending their result against Florida Southern in Lakeland, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
The Sharks (10-15, 5-10 SSC) and Mocs (10-17, 5-10 SSC) are currently tied for sixth in the Sunshine State Conference. A Shark win would push them to the No. 5 seed and will earn them a date at Saint Leo in the SSC quarterfinal round. A loss drops them to No. 7, and will pit the squad against the conference's No. 2 seed, which could either be Eckerd or Rollins.
NSUSharks.com and head coach
Gary Tuell spoke about postseason scenarios and the finale with the Mocs:
Q: While specific seeding is still up in the air, what is known is a win gives you the No. 5 seed in a tough conference, top to bottom. What more can you say that you already haven't about the SSC this year? GT: "It's been a wild ride. There's not an NCAA DII league anywhere like this one. I was looking at the stats the other day and saw that as a league, in all non-conference games, we've won almost 73 percent of our games, which is second best among all DII leagues nationally. But once we start playing each other we just beat each other up. There are no surprises in this league. If the last place team knocks off one of the top two or three teams, nobody is shocked, nobody blinks. You just know every night that anyone can win and anything can happen. I don't care who you play, if you have an off night or you don't show up with your best effort, you will probably get your feelings hurt because every team is capable, every team is good. There's really not an inch of difference between the top and the bottom of our league. That's what makes it special. If we win Saturday night, we'll be on the road Wednesday to play Saint Leo. If we lose at Florida Southern, it looks like we'll get Eckerd or Rollins, depending on what happens in a couple of other games Saturday. It doesn't matter where you go or who you play. You just have to play your best and hope it's good enough to advance. In our last two games, in a three-point loss at Embry-Riddle and a four-point loss to Eckerd, we played as well as we have all year. I like where my team is at right now. We had chances to win both of those two games, played as well defensively as any team I've coached, and our guys are definitely playing hard and giving great effort. That's all you can hope for at the end of the year."
Q: None of the postseason talk can trump the fact that you'll be playing Florida Southern in front of a packed house, in a hostile environment, on their Senior Night. How can you prepare your guys for that sort of atmosphere? GT: "We're looking forward to the game. We just want to climb off the bus and have some fun. Florida Southern has two very special seniors in Dylan Travis and Dominique Williams. Those guys were two big reasons Southern won the national championship last year. They're terrific players. I'm glad we have a chance to play against the on their Senior Night because they've meant a lot to our league and I look forward to congratulating them and thanking them for what they've done for the Sunshine State Conference. I always enjoy playing at Southern. They have great teams, a great tradition and some of the best, if not the best, fans in the conference. They appreciate good basketball. I just want our guys to play hard and enjoy the moment. Enjoy the atmosphere and the competition and hopefully we'll play well and come out of there with a win. But it's never easy up there. It's a good game for us to get ready for the conference tournament."
Q: How big would a win be for momentum, if you believe in that sort of thing? GT: "Somebody said momentum is only as good as your last game. My wife, Cheryl, likes to say that the SSC is like the box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get. That's because of the parity in the league, but also because of the inconsistent nature of young people who play at this level. I think momentum is important if you can get on a 10, 11, 12-game winning streak. But I don't know if there's a lot of carryover from winning one or two games. What I do think is important is that you compete, play hard, block out, defend the lane and contest shots night in and night out. We've been doing that lately and I think there's some momentum on our part relative to how well we've defended and how great our focus has been the last three games. Hopefully that carries over to Saturday. But you have to be realistic, too. We're a zone defensive team playing against a Southern team that shoots the '3' better than anyone in the league. They don't have one or two guys who stroke it. They can put five lights-out shooters on the floor at one time and that's darn near impossible for any zone defense to cover. Saturday's game is not a good matchup for us but a great matchup for Southern, I get that. I know this is as tough a matchup for us as we can have because Southern has the offensive weapons to expose us. They're the only team we've played this year who shot us out of our zone. When we went to a man defense we were able to cover their shooters a little better, but they beat us off the dribble and they still made big 3's with hands in their faces. We'll just do the best we can and hope whatever we do slows them down a little."
Q: Though it would be easy to look ahead, how do you get the team to focus on just Saturday? GT: "That's not a problem for us. We've been very focused recently. If we come into Saturday's game as focused and ready to play as we have the last three games, we'll be fine. We talk a lot about the 'now' … about living in the moment, forgetting past mistakes and not thinking about tomorrow. We've been a pretty immature team at times this year, for a good part of the year actually, but lately our young guys have shown a lot of maturity and growth. We're not thinking about next week. Next week will take care of itself. We've spent the week having light workouts so our guys could get through mid-terms and final exams. I'm concerned we have lost a bit of our edge and we may not have it early in the game, but hopefully we'll get it back as the game progresses. We really need this game to help us prepare for the postseason, so none of us – players or coaches – are thinking beyond Saturday. We want to continue playing hard and playing with the kind of effort and energy and togetherness that we've had down the stretch. Our team is in a good place right now, mentally and physically. In fact, it's been a long time since I've had a team that seems to be as focused and together as this group is at the moment. Southern definitely has the firepower to set us back on our heels and knock some confidence out of us. I'm interested to see how well we can compete against them and I'm anxious to see if we've lost any of that focus and commitment after going through a tough week of exams
.
Q: You continue to be led by All-SSC candidates Harrison Goodrick (Jr., Sydney, Australia) and Chris Page (Sr., Plainfield, Ind.), who are playing as good as any combination in the league. However, on the flip side, you've said you'd like to see more quality depth. How can that be remedied this late in the season? GT: "Harrison and Chris have done a great job for us down the stretch. But for us to have a chance to win Saturday and beyond this weekend, we definitely need a couple other guys to step up on the offensive end. We have some players who are capable of playing better, contributing more, attacking the games with a more aggressive mental approach rather than a passive approach. They're doing that on the defensive end, but we need to find a couple more players who are going to take games by the throat and attack, attack, attack. Most of our guys are laid back, unselfish and passive by nature. But for us to be good we need a few of them to get themselves more involved rather than sit back and allow Chris and Harrison to do everything. We can't win Saturday or down the road with only two scoring threats. That's what makes teams like Barry, Rollins, Saint Leo and even this Florida Southern team so tough to beat. They put five guys on the floor who can beat you. We need to find other scoring options to take some of the burden off Chris and Harrison and hopefully we can find that on Saturday.
"If nothing else, we can certainly use Saturday's game to encourage some others to step up and play a little more aggressively, try to put them in position to contribute more. Sometimes Chris and Harrison are just so good that the other guys defer to them or, honestly, just enjoy watching them do their thing. But you can't win a championship that way. We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of things we can improve on. But lately we've been getting better and better. I really like my team right now. I wish we had another month to go in the season because we're getting better and better and growing so much closer than we were earlier in the year. Most players, at this time of the year, are worn down mentally and physically and just looking forward to the end of the journey. But I honestly believe our team is just beginning to have fun, just starting to believe in one another and just starting to enjoy the journey. I really think our guys would love to see the season go another month because there is a feeling in our group, and you can see it and feel it in practice every day, that they want to keep playing, that they're really starting to enjoy playing together. Their confidence is just growing every day. Like I said, we're in a good place right now. I don't think anything that happens Saturday, win or lose, will change that. These guys don't want the season to end, they're having fun. I'm very proud of my team and very proud of how far we've come together."
