Under the Radar Game of the Day: Sunday, December 28, 2014: US Coast Guard at Army

United States Coast Guard Academy at Army, 3:00 PM Eastern, free streaming at patriotleague.org

A battle between two service academies always comes with extra energy and passion beyond the relative talent and abilities of the athletes for both schools.  When Army and Navy meet on the football field every year, records do not count.  The only thing that matters is who wins the game.  While this season, as always, Army and Navy will meet at least twice in hoops during Patriot League play, the Cadets from West Point will get to take on the service academy from another branch of our armed forces this afternoon, the Division III U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

The USCG Bears actually opened the regular season television schedule this season when they played Hampden-Sydney in the Armed Forces Classic in Puerto Rico.  While they fell in that game, the Bears have played .500 ball since then and enter today’s contest at 4-5 on the season.  They are being led by junior guard Kevin Alvarez, who is averaging 15.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game, and senior forward David Anderson, who is averaging 12.8 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.  Of course, they have their work cut out for them this afternoon with the Army Black Knights.

Army enters today’s game at 8-2 on the season, including wins over Air Force and VMI at home, plus a road win at USC.  Their two losses came at Duke and in an upset home loss to Bryant.  With a sub-150 KenPom rating, Army certainly has not done enough in non-conference play to be an at-large bid contender, but the Black Knights appear do poised to seriously contend for the Patriot League title this year (conference play starts on Wednesday).

Army is one of five teams to have been a member of Division I since 1948 without ever playing in the NCAA tournament.  As we have noted here before, unlike the other four teams (Northwestern, William & Mary, The Citadel and St. Francis(BK)), Army did get an invite to the Big Dance back in 1966, but head coach Bobby Knight turned down the bid in order to take his team, including a guard by the name of Mike Krzyzewski, into the NIT.  That guard went on to coach the Cadets to the NIT in 1978 as well, the last time this team played in the postseason.  He then left Army and went on to have a fairly decent coaching career at some ACC school.

Army appears to be well on their way to a postseason bid this season, if not by winning the Patriot League’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, then potentially in one of the smaller tournaments such as the CIT.  Either way, head coach Zach Spiker has done an amazing job turning a perennial Patriot League doormat into a legitimate contender.  The Black Knights have certainly surpassed Navy, at least this year.  But before they move on to Navy and the rest of their conference schedule, Army has one last test to get by — and they should definitely not look past another service academy this afternoon.