CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. – With a regular season record of 21-8, Campbellsville men's basketball heads back to Pikeville to begin the Mid-South Conference tournament at the East Ky. Expo Center.
In the first round of the tournament, the Tigers will take on the Patriots of University of the Cumberlands on Saturday at noon ET. Cumberlands also finished the regular season with 21 wins and the same conference record as CU at 7-7.
These two teams had a two-point difference after the result of their two regular season match-ups after the Patriots won both games by a single point. In both contests a team lost a sizeable halftime lead with the Tigers relinquishing a 16-point halftime lead on Jan. 19 and Cumberlands held an 11-point lead at the break on Feb. 11.
Entering the tournament, CU has won five of their last seven games with their losses coming in the one-point loss to Cumberlands on Feb. 11 and a three-point loss in overtime to No. 11 Pikeville to end the regular season.
The Tigers finished the regular season with three of the top-six scorers in the conference as
Stephaun Adams finished second at 19.6 points per game,
Hagen Tyler finished third at 19.0 points per game and
Andrew Smith finished sixth at 16.8 points per game.
As the only players to average double figures for CU, those three will look to carry the scoring and minutes load with those three also being the only Tigers averaging over 30 minutes per game.
Tigers' head coach
Brent Vernon had been sticking to a seven-man rotation of Adams, Tyler, Smith,
Deion Evans,
Ronald Taylor,
Joan Duran, and
Sam Weining lately but he may be getting some reinforcements in the form of
Jacob King, who had missed the last eight games with a wrist injury. Officially, King has yet to be cleared, as the team will make a game-time decision on the status of the sophomore guard.
Cumberlands had a rollercoaster type of conference season to finish with their 7-7 record. They lost their first three games then followed that up with a four-game winning streak then finished the season swapping wins and losses the rest of the way.
Offensively, they are led by Malik Colvin-Seldon, who averages 15.7 points per game on 58.7 percent shooting from the field. Colvin-Seldon, an athletic forward, is also a willing passer leading the Patriots with 2.2 assists per game and is a force on the defensive end with 1.4 blocks and 1.4 steals per game to lead UC.
This game is the 4/5 match-up of the tournament as the winner will take on the winner of the 1/8 between Georgetown and Cumberland University. Both teams are hoping their resume stacks up to earn an at-large bid into the NAIA National Tournament but a win would likely solidify their place.
