CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. – CU men's basketball will look to ride the momentum of their late win over Cumberland as they host rival Lindsey Wilson Saturday afternoon at the Powell Athletic Center.
 
The Tigers and Blue Raiders will meet for the first time this season after Campbellsville won both regular season head-to-head meetings last season.
 
Tip-off is scheduled for 4 p.m. ET but the game will start about 30 minutes after the conclusion of the Lady Tigers game against LWC. The games will be broadcast on WLCU TV, Comcast Channel 10, as well as campbellsvilletigers.com/watch with the radio broadcast remaining on 88.7 FM The Tiger. The voice of Lady Tiger and Tiger basketball, Matt Payton will be on the call for both TV and radio broadcasts.
 
LAST TIME OUT
The Tigers were able to survive a tough test against Cumberland, edging out a one-point victory at 54-53 Thursday night. Campbellsville trailed 53-52 with 35 seconds left when a three from Stephaun Adams was off the mark but Andrew Smith was able to grab the offensive rebound and score the putback to give the Tigers a 54-53. They would eventually win by that score after getting a stop on the defensive end and grabbing the defensive rebound as the clock ran out.
 
MSC REWIND
Every home team that played Thursday night, won their game with No. 9 Georgetown, No. 16 Pikeville and Shawnee State all won along with Campbellsville's win. Shawnee State and Georgetown moved to 2-0 as the Bears beat their second-straight ranked opponent with a 83-74 win over No. 19 Cumberlands. Pikeville bounced back after their loss to Shawnee State with a 84-79 win over Life at home.
 
SCOUTING LINDSEY WILSON
The Blue Raiders have started off their conference season 0-2 now at an 8-8 overall record on the season. Their offense scores 76.6 points per game but they have the best defense in the Mid-South Conference at 65.1 points per game. LWC has six players averaging over nine points led by Kel Stotts at 15.7 points per game and down low, Fredens Deneus averages 9.2 points per game, 8.5 rebounds per game as the third leading rebounder in the conference.
 
MUCH NEEDED CLUTCH BUCKET
Andrew Smith's game-winning layup Thursday night was a weight off of the back of Campbellsville in terms of clutch baskets. In their most recent one-possession finals against Xavier and Georgetown, the Tigers were struggling from the field in the final few minutes of a one-possession game. Smith's score made CU 2-for-11 (18.2%) in late-game shots with the score tied or within one-possession. CU has two, one-point wins this season as both game-winning baskets came on offensive rebounds as Joan Duran was able to score a tip-in on the Tigers' 70-69 win over Voorhees on Nov. 2nd.
 
HOME COURT ADVANTAGE
After Thursday, the Tigers are now 10-0 at the Powell Athletic Center on the season. Even after the one-point win over Cumberland University, Campbellsville is averaging a 30.3 margin of victory in their home games. While scoring 97.0 points per game, the CU is shooting 52 percent from the field, 45.1 percent from three and 74.7 percent from the free throw line at the Powell Athletic Center. The Tigers also have a plus 5.1  turnover margin and a plus 4.9 rebound margin in their 10 home game this season.
 
VERNON AND ADKINS HEAD-TO-HEAD
Now the head coach of Lindsey Wilson, Keith Adkins will return to Campbellsville to face his former assistant in CU's head coach Brent Vernon for the sixth time since his departure. Adkins spent 16 seasons as the Tigers' head coach amassing 322 wins, the final four with Vernon as his assistant. The previous two seasons, Adkins was the headman at Life University where the Running Eagles defeated CU in all of their regular season meetings. Vernon was able to score his first victory over the man he worked under in last season's Mid-South Conference tournament when CU knocked off No. 21 Life in the first round 82-64.
 
MATCH-UP TO WATCH - TYLER VS. STOTTS
The Blue Raiders' leading scorer, Kel Stotts, and Campbellsville's second leading scorer, Hagen Tyler will go head-to-head Saturday afternoon. Both Tyler (31.6) and Stotts (30.2) lead their teams in minutes per game as they play at least 75 percent of the available minutes in a game. Both players have shot almost the same amount of threes with Stotts at 116 three-pointers taken and Tyler at 118 three-pointers taken but Tyler is more efficient and relies less on the three for his point production. 58.6 percent of the baskets made by Stotts from the field are three pointers where Tyler's two-pointer and three-pointer ratio is about 50/50 where 49.2 percent of Tyler's baskets from the field are threes. Tyler is also the more efficient player from the field, leading CU in field goal percentage, as a guard, at 50.8 percent with Stotts shooting 37.8 percent from the field.
 
REBOUND QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
For the second-straight game, Campbellsville was outrebounded as Cumberland had 47 to the Tigers' 37 on the game. The starting forwards for the Tigers in Andrew Smith and Deion Evans each pulled down 11 along with grabbing the two most important rebounds of the game for Campbellsville. Smith's offensive rebound that led to his game-winning layup was his only offensive rebound in the game and Evans came back on the defensive end to grab the defensive rebound after the Phoenix missed their final shot attempt.
 
GAME OF FIRSTS
Thursday night, the Phoenix took a 29-23 lead into halftime, the first time the Tigers trailed after the first half this season. Campbellsville was able to respond by holding Cumberland to 24 points in the second half, the lowest second half total by any Tiger opponent all season. The Tigers win was also their first this season when shooting a field goal percentage worse than their opponent.
 
TYLER MOVING ON UP
Senior Guard Hagen Tyler currently has 1,686 points scored in his CU career, good for sixth place all time in program history and 44 points away from being fifth. Most recently Tyler moved into sixth against in the MSC opener against Georgetown when he scored 14 points, passing Cecil Eillis. Hagen entered the top-10 in scoring all-time in CU history in the season opener against Kentucky Christian. He has moved up three spots since then, two spots in two games as he passed Marcio Kardosh with his 20-point game on Nov. 23 then followed it up with 21 the next night to pass Ramont Smith.
 
UP NEXT
The Tigers will get back on the road for the next two Mid-South Conference games when they face Life in Waleska, Ga. as the game will be hosted at Reinhardt University's gym.