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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern men's basketball team (11-15, 7-7 SSC) will play its final home game of the season Wednesday against the Florida Tech Panthers (16-10, 5-9 SSC) at 7:30 p.m. The game will broadcast live on 640 Sports.
 
"With two games to go in the conference regular season and a little over a week before the post-season tournament begins, we're just trying to get healthy, which is not a good circumstance to be in at this time of the year," said head coach Gary Tuell. "Maurice Fuller (Jr., Westfield, Ind.) suffered an injury in Monday's practice and may be out for a game or two or more. We just have to wait and see how he progresses each day, but certainly our goal is to get him as healthy as possible for the postseason. Casey Carroll (So., Youngstown, Ohio) continues to sit out of practice with back issues and Brian Cahill (Jr., Arlington, Va.), who has had those two back surgeries, is day-to-day. We're a six-man team and having three of your six battling health issues is obviously a problem for us."
 
Healthy or not, FIT will always be a rough matchup for the small NSU squad. NSU relied heavily on the 3-pointer in their first encounter this season, a 97-86 FIT win. NSU shot 21-for-44 from 3-point range, setting new program records for makes and attempts.
 
"Florida Tech has a 17 or 18-man roster, a dozen guys 6-5 or bigger and the most difficult team for us to match up since we start five guards," said Tuell. "We made 21 3's at their place earlier this year and scored 86 points and still lost. Offensively, we couldn't do much more than that. Defensively, we just don't have the size to compete with them inside or on the boards, and they took advantage of that the last time we played, scoring 97 points. Of course, a lot of that was Jermaine Jackson having a career-night shooting the 3 and scoring 38 points. Hopefully we can do a better job on him this time, but if we focus on taking the 3 away from them then we can't compete at all inside. If we pack it inside we still come up short on the glass and give up the open 3 to Jackson and Chris Carter and some other players who are capable shooters. It's a nightmare matchup for us."
 
NSU is fresh off a similar matchup with Tampa, in which the Spartans pounded the paint en route to a 71-60 victory. Tampa post player Vincent Cornu scored 22 points on 10-for-15 shooting against the Sharks.
 
"The loss to Tampa Saturday wasn't surprising," stated Tuell. "Tampa has beaten a whole lot of teams this year, which is why they're in second place with a game to play in their conference schedule. What was disappointing was our failure to follow the defensive game plan, the lack of effort and the way we played offensively, which was selfish and not at all like us. After beating Tampa soundly at their place I think our guys took them lightly and because of that, they got exactly what they deserved."
 
With a .500 in-conference record, NSU is in a three-way tie for fifth place in the standings. However, the league is set up for a crazy finish and the Sharks could finish anywhere from second to eighth.
 
"For us to have any chance against Florida Tech we will have to play our best game of the year, and we'll have to do that with some guys who are physically beat up," admitted Tuell. "We can't beat anybody playing the way we did against Tampa, much less a team like Tech that has such an enormous size and talent advantage on us. Whether we win or lose is not nearly as important as seeing us get back to playing the right way. If our bench has to play significant minutes then those guys will have to play with a focus and determination that, truthfully, they haven't shown a lot of. But they're capable of playing well and I thought they did a decent job when we put them in for the final nine minutes of the Tampa loss.
 
"It's 'Small Ball' against 'Tall Ball' Wednesday night. We played one of our best games of the year at Tech when we lost by 11, so I'm not sure there's anything we can do differently. We have to be smarter in our press and try harder to hold the block outs so we can get at least one over-the-back rebounding call. Our biggest concern is getting as healthy as possible for next week's tournament and trying to find our edge in the last two games so that we go into postseason with the right mindset."

Tune into 640 Sports 15 minutes before the game for the pregame show. Fans can watch the game live HERE and follow live stats HERE.

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