BOSTON — Following a weekend sweep at home over Campbell and Stony Brook to improve their conference record to 7-7, Northeastern could not continue the momentum against the visiting Charleston Cougars, falling Thursday night by a score of 73-62.
The Huskies lost the previous meeting this season at Charleston’s TD Arena by just two points, but that was with junior guard Masai Troutman and junior forward Youri Fritz in the lineup — both missed Thursday’s contest due to injury. Fritz, in particular, was crucial to Northeastern’s defense against Cougars senior forward Ante Brzovic that game. Head coach Bill Coen had Fritz share the floor with junior center Collin Metcalf then, but without him available Thursday, the Huskies could only play one true big against Brzovic.
Metcalf held his own as best as he could in one-on-one defense against Brzovic, but where he really shined was at the rim, particularly in transition play. Metcalf tied a season high with six blocks, and played 34 minutes, which meant graduate student forward Alexander Nwagha saw just four minutes of action. Nwagha had started both games last weekend, splitting the minutes in those games relatively evenly with Metcalf.
The star of the show early on for the Cougars was sophomore forward Lazar Djokovic, who went a perfect 4-for-4 from the field in the first half and recorded two blocks. Brzovic, though, would finish the half with the team lead in scoring thanks to a three-pointer made just before time expired, after Northeastern’s defense left him wide open at the top of the key. Despite being a 29% shooter from three on the season, there was no one in the big man’s zip code, and he knocked down the shot with ease.
It was silly mistakes like that which doomed the Huskies Thursday. Junior guard Harold Woods handed Charleston a golden opportunity when he assumed a ball had gone out of bounds and signaled for Northeastern possession, not realizing that the ball was still live. Sophomore guard JB Frankel committed a carrying violation that was so textbook it should be in an officiating manual. And maybe most maddeningly of all, Woods and junior guard LA Pratt missed back-to-back layups late in the second half that could have cut the lead to three.
Instead, the lead never got closer than seven, and Charleston was able to comfortably close out their seventh consecutive win in the all-time series over Northeastern.
One particular point of trouble for the Huskies was the Cougars’ full-court press, which they unleashed towards the middle of the game. Northeastern notably struggled against teams’ full-court pressure towards the ends of games during non-conference play, yet there doesn’t seem to have been any noticeable improvement in the months since then.
“I didn’t think [Charleston’s] press was that good,” Coen said. “I thought it caught us a little off-guard, which it shouldn’t have, and we were way too casual with our passes in the backcourt.”
Some of the Huskies’ problems closer to the basket could be attributed to their disadvantage in frontcourt depth, especially with the aforementioned absence of Fritz.
“Their size presented us with some problems,” Coen said. “When they went with two bigs, we had Harold at our power forward spot. He did a great job, I thought, early on, he was able to generate some offense. As the game went on, he missed some shots around the rim, and that’s a tribute to their size and length around the rim.”
The loss dropped Northeastern to 7-8 in CAA play, and they currently sit in eighth place out of the 14 teams in the conference. Charleston improved to 11-4 and moved into sole possession of third place in the conference. The Huskies’ win over Campbell last weekend remains their only victory over the top half of the CAA so far this season, and they are going to have to get through those teams if they want to cut down the nets at the conference tournament in Washington, D.C.
“We have to be better defensively if we expect to beat a team like Charleston,” Coen said. “Our message to the group is that, that’s probably going to end up being a top-four team [in the conference], and that’s the level of play that we have to get to if we hope to win a CAA championship down in D.C. So it gives us a measuring stick of where we have to improve and how we’re going to get better.”
The Huskies head down to New Jersey to take on Monmouth on Monday night. Stay tuned to WRBB for continued coverage of the 2024-25 men’s basketball season.