Sunday, February 17, 2013

Charleston comes to Cullowhee

Doug Wojcik - CoC head coach
More than likely for the last time ever, Charleston will make it's final visit to Cullowhee, on Wednesday, February 20th 2013.

The Cats and Cougars could possibly meet one more time, in the final SoCon tournament appearance for Charleston, but other than that possibility, this will be the last meeting between Western Carolina and College of Charleston.

Hopefully, the Catamounts can give the Cougars a proper send off to CAA land.

The Cougars will come to the Ramsey Center sporting a 19-8 overall record, and are 11-4 in the SoCon, firmly in control of second place in the South Division.  The Cats are only a half game out of second place in the North, and with that, the all important "fourth" tournament bye.  The Catamounts need to do some soul searching, and figure out how to win this game, or once again face the prospects of a play-in game to reach the quarter finals of the tournament.

I've got a couple of suggestions on how to win.

#1. Stop the fouls.
Elon's 40 free throw attempts marks the third time this season an opponent was put on the charity stripe for 40-or-more free throw tosses: Western Kentucky had 43 free throws, Tennessee had 42, while Elon had 40. Now I realize that both Davidson and Elon stock homer refs just for their home games, these are ridiculous numbers of fouls committed by the entire team.  We have been beaten numerous times this season by the number of times we sent

#2. A ridiculously high number of field goal attempts.
These numbers would be fine, if we were making in the neighborhood of 50% of them.  However that's not the case. The made percentages usually fall out like they did against Elon.  Western attempted 62 field goals, and only made 25 baskets, that's a whopping 39% shooting. Has Hunter given the entire team the freedom to throw the ball up at will? It's quite obvious that WCU for many seasons has had very poor shot selection. This should be addressed.

#3.  Protect the ball.
Poor and sometime even sloppy passing practices causes many turnovers.

This team has the talent, but to they have the patience to execute?  Only they can and will answer this question in how they play the game.


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