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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern men’s basketball team (4-4, 0-1 SSC) is returning to the NSU Arena at the Don Taft University for the Trip Sports Cruzin Classic. The Sharks will face Northwestern Ohio on Friday, Dec. 17th at 8 p.m. and Franklin Pierce on Saturday, Dec. 18th at 8 p.m.

“After three very challenging road games, we’re looking forward to playing at home twice before the Holiday Break,” said head coach Gary Tuell. “We don’t know a lot about Friday’s opponent, Northwestern Ohio, but we do know they have some very talented guards and an explosive offense that scores points in bunches so they will certainly test us. On Saturday night we host Franklin Pierce, who has struggled a little lately, but records can be deceiving. We know how good they are and we saw them play very well in a 16-point win against Saint Leo from our league. They are experienced, disciplined and tough-minded kids who will present a difficult challenge for us."

Records can indeed be deceiving as NSU’s 4-4 record does not accurately tell the team’s story. The Sharks came out with a strong 3-1 start but played meager competition in teams such as Johnson & Wales and Warner. They then slid under .500 by losing to Flagler at home and picking up a couple losses at the Loop Pizza Grill Classic in Valdosta, Ga.

Despite the three losses, the Sharks improved their performance in every game. They went down to the wire with No. 6 Alabama-Huntsville and took Valdosta St., a team that advanced to the Elite Eight last season, to double overtime in their gym on the second night of back-to-back games.

The improvement process culminated in the team’s biggest win of the season this past Tuesday. The Sharks took a 76-66 revenge victory on the road over a Flagler team that was undefeated and coming off a blowout win over No. 5 USC Aiken. Three Sharks scored in double figures while NSU held the Saints to 18.5 percent shooting from three-point range.

“We’re improving,” said Tuell. “Certainly we’ve come a long way in the last three games. We played about as well as we could play at this time of the year in our games against Alabama-Huntsville and Valdosta State. We didn’t play as well in our win at Flagler Tuesday night but two weeks ago we gave them 85 points and this time around they scored only 66 on their court. That’s a 19-point improvement, and we’ll take that any day. Flagler was unbeaten and coming off a big victory over a top 10 opponent, so when you win on the road against a team of that caliber you have to be doing something right.”

Coach Tuell credits a change on the defensive end to the team’s overall improvement.

“Our defense was much better the second time around than in our first meeting with them,” Tuell said. “I swear, for the first few weeks of the season I thought we had a whole team of narcoleptics. We fell asleep during games, mostly when the other guys had the ball. So we made two changes. We put coffee in the water cooler at the end of the bench, and we changed our defense to a simple obtuse polygon with equilateral hyperbolic trapezoid sliding man-to-man principles. Just basic basketball. We still fall asleep, but not as often.”

While the defense has been reforming as the season progresses, the offense has been firing on all cylinders. The team has averaged 88 points per game and currently rank sixth in the nation in scoring offense. The Sharks also rank in the top five in three-point shots per game with 9.8. Regardless of who is on the court, NSU rarely fields a team that does not feature five three-point shooters. Despite the efficiency on the offensive end, the coaching staff continues to tool with the rotation in order to find the best matchups come conference season.

“We’ve also toyed more with bigger lineups, and our four inside guys – Ross Allsop (Sr., Sydney, Australia), Robert Huntington (Jr., Perth, Australia), Alex Gynes (Sr., Nowra, Australia) and Lukas Roesch (So., Sugar Grove, Australia) – have responded with some excellent efforts,” said Tuell. “We’ve experimented with playing bigger guards and for the most part Max Papendieck (Sr., Adelaide, Australia), Teddy Tassy (Jr., Boca Raton, Fla.) and Jacob Reed (Fr., Perth, Australia) have done a good job for us. We still need John Brooks (Sr., Perris, Calif.), Lemar Dyer (Sr., Miami, Fla.) and Cody Dennison (So., Newark, Ohio) to carry us and get us through some rough patches and they’re doing just fine.

“But where we once were a three-guard team, we’re now playing more with two guards and three bigs and during those stretches our guards just have to be patient and remain focused until their opportunities come. We play everybody, we just don’t know from game-to-game which lineup is going to get the most minutes. We’re trying to let the players determine that by their effort and their performance and their attention to details.”

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