The regular season ended much like it began for the men’s basketball team.
The team dropped back-to-back road contests against Louisiana-Lafayette and North Texas last weekend, and fell to third place in the conference standings, losing what appeared to be a secured bye in the first round of this week’s Sun Belt Conference tournament.
Now, the Pioneers (13-16, 9-7) must take on Florida International (10-18, 5-11) in the first round on Saturday at 7:45 p.m. in Hot Springs, Ark., a team they beat 79-70 back on Jan. 15 in Magness Arena. DU is the No. 3 seed from the West Division, while FIU is the No. 6 seed out of the East Division.
Denver ends the season on a three game losing skid, mimicking their four-game losing skid to begin the season back in November.
“This year has been a challenge for us, from having to replace Nate [Rohnert] to having two season ending injuries, one to Rob Lewis at the beginning of the year, and another [to Andrew Hooper] in January,” said head coach Joe Scott. “We weren’t prepared for everything, however we rebounded well from our rough start and did a really good job dealing with all that adversity.”
Scott breaks the season into thirds–the team’s rough patch early on (a 2-9 start), their strong play early in conference play (6-0 to begin SBC season) and then the final stretch from Jan. 22 onward, which is when they lost red-shirt junior Andrew Hooper for the season to a concussion, resulting in a 3-7 finish.
“I don’t think the losing streak is going to affect us,” said Scott. “In a weird way, the way our schedule ended will help us in the tournament. It was a tough stretch where we had to play one of the hottest in the nation in Lafayette. Then playing the defending conference champions who have several seniors playing some of the last games of their career.”
Denver lost on Thursday night in the Cajundome, falling to the Ragin’ Cajuns 58-52 in overtime.
With the win, and another later on in the week, ULL propelled itself to earning a coveted first-round bye along with Arkansas State, who finished tied atop the West Division standings.
For the Pioneers, they blew a lead in the division that was as much as two full games earlier in the season, losing four of their last five and dropping six consecutive road contests.
They suffered one of their worse losses of the season on Saturday, falling 63-41 to North Texas.
“We weren’t playing our best on Saturday, but we got a lot of good looks, the ball just didn’t drop for us,” said Scott. “In Thursday’s game we competed against a very good team, and the game went to the buzzer. We met every challenge, and played all the way to the last possession. It was a tough loss to handle.”
After going 19-13 last season, DU will have to make a magical run in the postseason in order to get back to being a .500 ball club.
“We are not looking at records right now,” said Scott. “It comes down to this, the regular season is behind us. It’s not the outcome we wanted exactly, but we know what we can do and I think we can compete with anybody in the conference, and we showed that in the regular season.”
Scott added that the team’s sole focus is on the first game of the tournament, because the next game isn’t promised.
Scott believes anything can happen at this time of the year, and that the SBC doesn’t have a clear top-team heading into its postseason tournament.
“What makes our league hard is that there are no dominant teams, however that means there are no easy matchups because a lot of teams are capable of winning,” said Scott.
When breaking down FIU, Scott said that the Pioneers will need to handle the one-on-one match-ups their opponents like to force other teams into.
With two of the team’s better big men, Lewis and Hooper, out for the season, DU will need consistent performances from the likes of junior Justin Coughlin, red-shirt sophomore Trevor Noonan and freshman Chris Udofia.
“Our concentration is on this first game,” said Scott. “Winning one at a time is the only method that works come this time of the year.”
