Under the Radar Game of the Day – Monday, December 21: High Point at William & Mary

Under the Radar Game of the Day: High Point at William & Mary, 7:00 PM Eastern, caa.tv

For the rest of today’s Highlighted Games and more, CLICK HERE.

The College of William & Mary (named after England’s King William III and Queen Mary II) is, after Harvard, the second oldest college in the United States, having been founded in 1693.  Its alumni includes some of our most historic figures, including Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler.  The school has been playing men’s basketball since the 1905-06 season, and has been a member of the NCAA since the beginning.  Nine times in school history, the Tribe have been one win away from a berth in the NCAA Tournament.  A heartbreaking one point loss in the 2014 CAA Championship game was the most recent, and dropped the school record in such games to 0-9.  Along with Army, Northwestern, The Citadel and St. Francis-Brooklyn, William & Mary is on the very short list of teams that have been members of the NCAA since the inception of divisional play in 1948 without ever making it to the Big Dance.  Once again this season, the Tribe will be trying to get that elusive first-ever berth.

William & Mary enters play tonight with a record of 6-3, and the CAA’s top KenPom rating at 72.  The Tribe have won at North Carolina State and at home against Old Dominion already this season.  Two of their three loses are certainly understandable (at Dayton and at Virginia), but the third was a real head-scratcher (at Howard) that may come back to haunt the team if it cannot capture an automatic bid this year.  The Tribe do have two more chances to pick up solid home wins before the start of conference play, as they will be hosting a pair of team expected to contend for their conference championships — Central Michigan next week and High Point tonight.

High Point, led by one of the nation’s most exciting players in John Brown, enters the game tonight with a record of 8-3.  A win tonight would be the Panthers’ most note-worthy on the season so far, though their losses have been respectable (at Georgia, at Texas Tech and at NC State).  The NC State loss, last time out, may still be stinging for the team, as the Panthers had the ball on a sidelines in-bounds play with 19 seconds left and committed a costly turnover.  They then had another chance when the Wolfpack missed two free throws, but gave up an offensive rebound and watched Cat Barber sink a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to send HPU home with the loss.  High Point must put that game behind them and come out strong again tonight if they want to capture the victory in what will be their last regular season non-conference game against a D1 opponent.