Movin on Up

After receiving votes in the pre-season mid-major poll on collegeinsider.com, UNCW has taken it's 5-1 record and moved into the top 25 at #19.

Old Dominion stays at #2 in this weeks poll. Hofstra drops to #23, and George Mason drops to #24. Drexel, VCU, and Northeastern are also receiving votes in this weeks poll. All in all a strong showing for the CAA.

Mid-Major Top 25

Box Score

Here is the Box Score from Saturday nights game between UNCW and Elon.

Once again the score was 59-51.

Hawks Rise Higher Than Phoenix

The Seahawks defeated the Phoenix of Elon University with the help of 17 points from John Goldsberry Saturday night. He was followed by Todd Hendley who finished with 12 points on the night. Beckham Wyrick led the way in rebounds with 8. Goldsberry also had team highs in steals and assists with 4 and 3 respectively. Temi Soyebo also had 3 assists on the night. After building a 20 point lead in the 2nd half, Seahawks had to hold off Elon late to pull out the 59-51 win. The team shot well from the freethrow line but still committed too many turnovers. Especially after being in the top 10 in the nation in TO's the last few years. But nevertheless UNCW will continue their two game road trip on Wednesday night in Williamsburg Virginia for a 7pm start against William and Mary. The win improves UNCW to 5-1 on the young season.

In other CAA news Drexel suffered two hard fought losses on national TV against top ranked Duke and 16th ranked UCLA. The UCLA loss was especially tough as Drexel lost it on a free throw with less than a second to go. So once again close but no cigar for the CAA against big conference teams. Luckily someone in the CAA got it done against a Big 10 team (I'm looking at you UNCW with your wonderful BCA title win over Northwestern)

Northeastern remains undefeated at 4-0. Georgia State is still 1-0. UNCW is 5-1 as stated earlier. And Old Dominion and William and Mary are 3-1.

The CAA is now 24-13 in out of conference play by my count.

Drexel leads the way in RPI rankings at 13, followed by Northeastern at 19. UNCW remains in the top 50 at #49.

Till next time.

Thanks Andy

Andy Katz has a writeup about Drexel's game with Duke tonight. He also discusses CAA hoops overall. There is some mention of UNCW towards the bottom and about how we need more attention.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Good Luck Dragons.

Green Not So Mean

The Seahawks took down the Mean Green of North Texas tonight by a score of 70-52. Here is the boxscore (hopefully it will work this time). John Goldsberry led the Seahawks in scoring with 15. He also put up 5 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals. Vladimir Kuljanin followed with 12 and Todd Hendley came next with 10. Nate Miller led us in rebounds with 9. John Goldsberry and TJ Carter take the cake in the assist category with 5. And Dejan Grkovic led the way with 3 steals. The crowd was pretty good in Trask Coliseum tonight for the home opener even considering the fact that it was the first night of Thanksgiving break (btw I'm not too happy with the scheduling in the CAA this year. But I'll save that for another post.) The official attendance was just over 5,000, so about 1,000 short of capacity. The student section was raucous even though some refused to stand up, hopefully the whole section will be on their a-game for the Virginia Commonwealth matchup on Dec. 4th. We were really getting after it tonight and I am very proud of our team.

We hit the court next on Saturday at 7 for a matchup against Elon.

In other CAA news Georgia State defeated Delaware to win their first CAA game. So congrats to them. Old Dominion lost to Wisconsin by 3 last night. That win sure would have been nice but I guess we will just have to show ODU how to do it in December when we travel to Madison. And Drexel has a nationally televised matchup against Duke on Wednesday at 7 on ESPN2. They will then face either UCLA or Memphis which should also be televised nationally.

Drexel and Northeastern stand at 3-0 on the young season. They are followed by Georgia State at 1-0. Coming in Next is UNCW at 4-1 and ODU and William and Mary at 2-1. Hofstra and Towson are 1-1.

The CAA is now 19-10 in out of conference play.

Till next time happy Thanksgiving. And as always go Seahawks.

Oh Well

UNCW exceded their expectations for this roadtrip by going 3-1 and winning the BCA invitational with some quality wins by methodically pulling apart opponents. But the high altitude and little rest finally got to us on Friday night as we turned over a win to Colorado in Denver on Friday night by a score of 73-54. Here is the boxscore. The seahawks committed 26 turnovers which will lose the game by itself, especially when you only score 54 points. But once again i find a curious statistic similar to our game against Wyoming. Colorado shot 24 free throws compared to a grand total of 8 for UNCW. Now I realize that we are a physical team but I seriously doubt Colorado was letting us take that many shots without contact. It just isn't really feasible that they only made contact with our players on 4 shots, when apparently we did it to them 12 times at least. But I guess you just have to adjust to whatever the refs were calling and Colorado did that while we did not.

In other CAA news Delaware, Drexel, Old Dominion, and Northeastern all stand at 2-0 on the season. Hofstra stands at 1-0. UNCW as stated earlier stands at 3-1, while George Mason and William and Mary have started 1-1. So that brings the CAA out of conference record to 14-4.

UNCW hits the court again Tuesday night for our home opener against North Texas at 7:00.

With more bad news the Carolina Panthers lost to the Chicago Bears on Sunday 13-3. Pretty sorry performance overall. Frankly I don't feel like talking about it. At least they are still tied for first in the NFC South with Tampa Bay at 7-3.

I guess that's it for now.

Oh Well.

Drexel Loves the NIT

Congrats to Drexel on their nationally televised win over Sam Houston State last night. All in all a fairly impressive performance in front of a record home crowd. The Drexel students ended the night by chanting "We want Duke". Not so sure they thought that through, but you gotta love the optimism. Drexel will face off against the Blue Devils in the semi-finals.

In much more important news UNCW takes on Colorado in Boulder tonight at 10:30 EST to finsih off our 4 game season opening road trip. This is a Big 12 opponent and could really help our RPI, as well as our confidence, to come away with a win.

And finally many other CAA teams kick off their regular season today. Good luck to all.

Champs Already

Well John Goldsberry only put up single digits once again but as usual everyone else stepped up to give UNCW a 56-48 win over our Big Ten foe Northwestern. The refs were not suprisingly easier on us this game giving Northwestern 22 FT's to our 20. UNCW takes home the BCA Invitational crown. (Not Quite the NCAA Championship, but I guess we will just have to wait till April to bring that home to Trask) So this gives us our first 3-0 start in 10 years. And these 3 wins came in 3 days in high altitude, including one against the host. Now we get 2 days off before taking on a Big 12 opponent, Colorado, Friday night at 10:30 EST.

The Seahawks have already exceded expectations for this road trip, where 2 wins would have been acceptable out of the 4 games. So now we enter another hostile environment in Boulder with maybe a little swagger which is something that has lacked from our road games in the past.

In the meantime a reminder once again that Drexel has a ESPN2 game thursday night at 8:00. Should be fun to see a fellow CAA team on national television early in the season.

Till next time Go Seahawks
And to a lesser extent Go Dragons

The Far Side of the Moon

In my first movie post I would like to strongly recommend The Far Side of the Moon (2003 Robert Lepage). We watched it last night in my Francophone Cinema class and I enjoyed more than most films I have seen this year. It was made in Quebec and it was based on a one man play. There are many trippy dream sequences (a la The Big Lebowski) and the movie starts depressing and ends very pleasantly. Any film fan will find something they enjoy about this film. The only problem with accessing this film is that, well it is hard to access in the US. Most university libraries should have it, and it is available for purchase on Amazon.com. Other than that, I guess just take a road trip to Canada and buy it. It would almost be worth it.

Till Next time

Phew

Well it seemed like old times last night as the seahawks battled Wyoming to OT and picked up a 62-59 win over our Mountain West opponent in front of 5,400 people in Arena Auditorium. Goldsberry was help to only 5 shots and 5 points. TJ Carter picked up the slack off the bench putting up 11. Beckham Wyrick put up 9 points, 8 of which were in OT. Just like last year the other players proved they could step up when John has been bottled up by defenders. Another thing that seems awfully familiar is the iffy officiating. Wyoming, playing on their home court, was sent to the free throw line 49 times, compared to 18 for UNCW. It seems like the refs may have been a little too concerned about upsetting the home crowd. But regardless we will take the win. We face off against Northwestern tonight at 10:00 EST. Northwestern pulled an impressive upset over UNC-Charlotte last night beating them 61-47. It will be interesting to see which team is able to keep it together for the third day in a row. Go Get Em Hawks.


In other CAA news Drexel defeated Princeton last night in the Pre-Season NIT. They will face Sam Houston State Thursday night, They are coming off an impressive upset of Missouri. The game will be broadcast from the Daskalakis Center in Philadelphia at 8:00 EST on ESPN2. It will be some nice exposure for the CAA. Good Luck Drexel.

Perfectly Golden

John Goldsberry may not be too impressed with himself. But the rest of us seahawk fans here at UNCW are. The Vandalia, Ohio native posted 21 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds (ridiculous for a PG/SG) and not to mention 3 steals in the 35 minutes he played in Laramie, WY against Butler. Goldsberry did his part in UNCW's 75-59 victory contributing to a team total of %55.1 shooting. It could be a great season if the seahawks keep on shooting like they did in the first two exhibition games along with this season opener. Butler is a mid-major power and this was definitely a statement game. Next up is Wyoming tonight at 10:00 EST. UNCW will face either UNC-Charlotte or Northwestern depending upon the outcome of both games.

Launch

Welcome to my little experiment. We will see how it develops over the coming weeks. I will try my best to keep it entertaining as possible. We will see what happens. Any suggestions send me an email.