BOSTON — Northeastern head coach Bill Coen’s response to a “how are you?” postgame said it all.
“Better than the last time I saw you guys,” Coen replied, with a hint of a smile.
That last time was after a head-scratching wire-to-wire loss on the Huskies’ home floor to Hampton, a team that Northeastern dominated on the road just a weekend prior. A loss which dropped the Huskies to 5-7 in conference play, and put them dangerously close to the cut line for having to play in the first round of the CAA tournament.
Thursday night, though, the Huskies took on a Campbell team riding seven-straight conference wins — five of those coming by 18 points or more — and took a lead just over seven minutes into the second half that they would not relinquish. Northeastern prevailed by a final score of 67-58, notching their first win all season over a team in the top half of the CAA standings.
Despite the Huskies being the home team, the loudest cheers during the introduction of starting lineups came for Campbell sophomore forward Colby Duggan, a native of Monson, Mass. who played prep school ball just 20 miles north of Boston, at Phillips Academy in Andover. A strong contingent of Duggan’s friends and family, who dubbed themselves “Colby’s Crew,” packed the stands behind the visitors’ bench.
Duggan came into Thursday leading Campbell in scoring with an average of 15 points per game, a surge from his freshman season mark of under four points per game. His role in the offense has become even more important after the Camels’ second-leading scorer on the season, senior guard Jasin Sinani, suffered a season-ending leg injury last weekend against Elon.
But the way Campbell has won games this season has been through their defense, specifically defending the three — they hold opponents to the lowest three-point shooting percentage in the entire country, at just 27%. They have been able to shut down some of the CAA’s best deep shooters during their winning streak, like Monmouth’s Abdi Bashir (a 40% shooter on the season, who went 2-for-13) and Stony Brook’s CJ Luster (a 42% shooter on the year, who went 1-for-6).
On Thursday, the only change in the starting lineup for Northeastern was at the center position, where graduate student Alex Nwagha made his first start of the season, with Coen opting to have junior Collin Metcalf come off the bench for the first time this year. Nwagha and Metcalf ended up splitting the 40 minutes relatively evenly, but Nwagha was the star of the show, registering a season-high nine rebounds, six of those coming on the offensive end. The veteran Husky also recorded nine points, on 4-for-6 shooting.
“Campbell runs a Princeton offense, and [Nwagha’s] been through, obviously for many years, the way we defend that, and has a full understanding of that,” Coen said. “I thought he could give us a lift, and to his credit, he came ready and really provided that spark, defensively and offensively.”
The Camels got off to a strong start from the floor Thursday night, shooting 7-for-9 in the first eight minutes of the game to open up a 17-11 lead. Northeastern went 5-for-16 in the same span, including an 0-for-5 mark from three-point range, as the visitors showed why they were best in the nation at defending the deep ball. The Huskies’ three-point luck did not improve the rest of the half, and they headed into the locker room just 1-for-11 from beyond the arc. Campbell, however, wasn’t able to fully take advantage of Northeastern’s cold shooting, as the Camels went 4-for-17 from the floor themselves after their hot start.
With 15 seconds to go in the half, Campbell’s lead stood at five, and the Huskies had the ball with the shot clock off. Junior guard Rashad King let some time run off the clock before making his move to the basket, putting up a wild shot that didn’t go, but careened off the backboard to Nwagha. Nwagha’s putback attempt was also no good, but he got the rebound again and hit a fadeaway floater as time expired to put Northeastern within three heading into the break. The play was a key momentum boost for the Huskies that epitomized Nwagha’s effort throughout the night.
King and junior guard Harold Woods co-led the Huskies with 10 points each in the first half, shooting a combined 8-for-19 from the field. For the Camels, Duggan and junior guard Elijah Walsh also tied for the team lead, at eight points each, although Duggan was just 3-for-10 from the floor and 0-for-3 from beyond the arc. The sophomore, who came into Thursday averaging 37% from three on the season, got some good looks from deep (and at the rim, as well) that just didn’t go down, but the Huskies defense did a good job on him throughout the night.
“We kind of isolated our attention on [Duggan] in the scout, making sure that he didn’t get quality looks,” Coen said. “Both Alex and Collin did a great job on him when he was at the four, Harold did a terrific job on him, so it’s really because of their effort and attention to detail.”
Northeastern cut the deficit to one point less than two minutes into the second half, off of back-to-back and-one opportunities drawn by Nwagha, although he missed the free throws to complete the three-point play on both occasions. Three-pointers from junior guard LA Pratt and sophomore guard JB Frankel separated by just over a minute allowed the Huskies to tie the game, and an incredibly tough layup on a baseline drive by Pratt gave the home team the lead for the first time since six minutes into the first half.
Senior forward Eric Van Der Heijden responded with a three for the visitors, but that was the last lead Campbell would hold all game, with the Huskies outscoring the Camels 24-14 the rest of the way.
Sixteen of the next 18 points for Northeastern came from either King or Woods, capped off by a King three off of an incredible cross-court pass from Woods on a play that almost identically matched another King three in that run three minutes earlier. Woods finished the game with 12 assists and 14 points, his second double-double in three games.
Throughout the night, Woods made a couple of plays that were questionable at best, including throwing an inbounds pass to start the second half that was immediately picked off by Campbell for a score, but the junior more than redeemed himself with his play down the stretch.
The Huskies were helped by the fact that the Camels went cold from the field in the second half, missing all of their last 12 three-point attempts, four of those coming from Duggan. Some of that can be attributed to good defense, but some were good looks that just happened to clang off the rim. Duggan finished the night just 5-for-18 from the field and 0-for-7 from beyond the arc, unable to deliver a winning performance in front of his large contingent of supporters.
The difference between Thursday’s effort and the performance from Saturday was clear to Coen.
“Just a great bounce-back effort from this group,” he said. “We didn’t play much inspired basketball on the defensive end last Saturday against Hampton. It was an emphasis all week to compete, and I thought it really was our defense tonight that allowed us to earn the victory. We competed toe-to-toe, got tough rebounds, made physical plays. We stayed connected on the defensive end, and ultimately that allowed us to beat a really talented and tough Campbell program.”
The win moves Northeastern to a 6-7 record in the CAA, tying them with Elon for seventh place out of the 14 teams in the conference. The Huskies also moved ahead of Drexel, Hampton, and Delaware with the victory, with those teams all currently tied for ninth place. One of those three teams would have to play in the first round of the conference tournament if the season ended today, as the bottom four teams do not get any byes and would have to win five games in five days in order to claim the conference crown.
One of the teams that appears to be headed for that first round is Stony Brook, currently sitting in second-to-last place with a 2-11 conference record. But, as evidenced by the game against Hampton on Saturday (and a close four-point win over the Seawolves on Long Island last month), the Huskies cannot afford to look past any opponent.
“It’s just game-by-game,” Coen said. “Now it’s next-play mentality. We’ve got a tough one coming up on Saturday against Stony Brook, we’ve got to get ready for that. We had a lot of guys log a lot of minutes, so trying to get them rested and patched up and ready to go mentally and physically is going to be a challenge in the short term. Obviously, that’s the CAA. There’s a lot of parity in this league and good coaches and really good players, and it’s no surprise that it’s a logjam in there with many teams with a similar record.”
Junior guard Masai Troutman and junior forward Youri Fritz both remained out for Northeastern Thursday. Coen said that it’s unlikely either will play Saturday, and that he expects Fritz to return before Troutman does.
The Huskies’ homestand continues as they host Stony Brook on Saturday afternoon. Max Schwartzberg and Sam Riggs will have the call at 3:30 p.m. on WRBB Sports+.