Feb 25, 2008

Men's Basketball Seeks to Clinch Third Patriot League Regular Season Title with Matchup at Second-Place Navy Wednesday


Feb. 25, 2008

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The American University men's basketball team travels to Annapolis, Md., Wednesday to face the Navy Midshipmen in a game that could clinch the Eagles' third regular season Patriot League title in their seventh season in the league.

AU currently sits alone atop the Patriot League standings at 9-3, one game ahead of second-place Navy with two league games remaining for each team. Should the Eagles win, they will move two games ahead of Navy with one game left and clinch the regular season title. Also, the Eagles would tie for the most PL wins in the regular season since joining the league in 2001. American won the regular season championship that first season, going 10-4 in league play, while AU shared the league title with Lehigh in the 2003-04 season, also finishing that season 10-4 in the PL.

The Midshipmen won the first meeting between these two schools this season, taking a 77-66 decision in Bender Arena on Jan. 30 in a game in which Greg Sprink scored a career-high 36 points. Therefore, AU must win Wednesday to split the season series and ensure that the Midshipmen do not have the tiebreaker should the two teams end up tied at the conclusion of the regular season.

Both teams enter the game on hot streaks. Navy just beat Army on Saturday in the annual Star Game to stretch its win streak to four games. After going 4-4 in its first eight league games, the Naval Academy is now 8-4 in the PL. Meanwhile, the Eagles have won six straight to turn a 3-3 league record into a 9-3 PL mark. AU has not lost since its defeat at the hands of the Midshipmen 26 days ago.

It should be an interesting matchup between two teams with distinctly different styles of play. The Midshipmen rank first in the Patriot League in scoring at 76.2 points per game. However, Navy ranks seventh in the PL in scoring defense, letting up 73.3 ppg. Meanwhile, the Eagles second in the league in scoring defense, allowing just 61.3 ppg, while ranking four in the Patriot League in scoring offense, notching 64.6 ppg.

Another interesting showdown should be between the league's leading scorer, Spring, who averages 20.9 ppg, and the PL's third-leading scorer, Garrison Carr of the Eagles, who averages 18.3 ppg. While Carr gets it done from outside the arc, hitting a Patriot League single-season record 111 three-pointers, Sprink does it more from the free throw line, scoring 176 of his 576 points this season from the charity stripe. Sprink is also the PL's second-leading rebounder, at 6.4 per game.

 

To read John Feinstein's writeup in the Washington Post on the American-Navy game, click here.