UNC-Asheville at Gardner-Webb, 8:00 PM Eastern, American Sports Network
Coastal Carolina. High Point. Radford. Charleston Southern. Winthrop. UNC-Asheville. Gardner-Webb. Seven teams, all tied for first place in the Big South standings with identical conference records of 8-4. And with only six games left in the conference season, we are about to see one of the wildest and craziest sprints for a conference regular season title that we have ever seen. That sprint begins tonight as two of the seven contenders, UNC-Asheville and Gardner-Webb, go head-to-head in our UTR Game of the Day.
The UNC-Asheville Bulldogs enter tonight’s game at 12-11, the worst overall winning percentage of the seven teams in this battle. Further, of their four non-conference wins, only one was over a D1 opponent (winning at East Carolina). Despite that slow start they have played very well since reaching Big South play. The Bulldogs are led by Andrew Rowsey who is coming off of a 22 point effort on Friday night against Longwood.
The Runnin’ Bulldogs of Gardner-Webb enter tonight’s game at 16-9 overall. Their non-conference wins include a victory in the Virgin Islands over Clemson and a road win at Purdue. They are currently on a three game winning streak. Gardner-Webb is led by Jerome Hill who regularly has been scoring in double digits. However, he was held to only 9 points back on January 3 when the Runnin’ Bulldogs lost in Asheville, 80-55, in the first meeting between these two teams. Hill and all his teammates will have to play a lot better than they did in that game to even the season series and try to be the first team to take a step forward in the chaos that is the 2015 Big South season.