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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team takes the short trip south Wednesday night to take on border mate and No. 23 Barry, tipping off at 7:30 p.m. from Miami Shores.
 
The Sharks (5-7, 1-3 SSC) will have their second game in a row against a top Sunshine State Conference (and nationally-ranked) squad, with the Bucs (11-2, 4-1 SSC) only trailing now-No. 7 Eckerd in the league standings. They feature the top scorer in the conference in Yunio Barrueta, averaging 25.5 per game to go along with 10.5 rebounds. He recently had a 40-point effort against Rollins that included 10 3-pointers and earned him the USBWA National Player of the Week Award.
 
NSU's harsh slate of games continues Saturday at home against Florida Southern (7-9, 3-3 SSC), last year's DII National Champions. Though the Mocs graduated a boatload of players and lost head coach Linc Darner, they won their first two SSC games this season, including a win over then-No. 24 Barry.
 
NSUSharks.com spoke with men's head coach Gary Tuell ahead of these next two games:
 
Q: Your tough recent stretch resumes with a road game against Barry Wednesday, followed by the defending National Champions Florida Southern Saturday. As always, it seems as if the SSC continues to be one of the toughest conferences in the nation, doesn't it?
 
GT: "Top to bottom (the SSC) is the best NCAA DII men's basketball league in America, unquestionably. Every other league has weak links and bottom feeders who can't compete with the top of their league. That's not the case in the Sunshine State Conference. The best teams in our league, year in and year out, tend to separate themselves from the others. But there are no nights off in this league. To be the best or one of the best teams in the league you have to earn it every night. Any team is capable of beating any other team. The best teams are the ones who win on the road, who consistently perform at the highest level –consistently is the key word – and who play with energy every night. The teams that figure out how to do that usually rise to the top. But anything can happen in our league because the players are good, the coaches are good and the competition is outstanding. If you think you can sleepwalk through a game in this league and still win, you're in for a nightmare. There are upsets in other leagues but I don't think the coaches or players in this league ever think a win or a loss is an upset. You throw the ball up and you hold on for 40 minutes because you never know what's going to happen. That's what makes the SSC fun and that makes our league special."
 
Q: Last Saturday, in a tough environment, your players hung tough against a very talented Eckerd squad. What can you say coming out of that battle moving forward?
 
GT: "Eckerd is terrific. One poll has them eighth in the country and another poll has them 12th. They have a lot of outstanding players and Tom Ryan is doing a great coaching job with them. We lost by 10 after going into the half tied, and maybe it would have been closer if Harrison Goodrick had not been ejected because he was having a big night for us, but Eckerd deserved to win. We had lull at the start of the second half where I didn't think we played with the same energy and emotion that we showed in the first half. Eckerd took advantage of that, the way good teams do, and we dug ourselves into a hole we couldn't quite overcome. Our execution at both ends of the floor was not good. Even though the final numbers looked good defensively, we had too many lapses in the second half, either because of confusion or lack of effort, and that cost us. You just can't take a play off in this league. Every possession has to be played like it's the last. Our effort was great for most of the game, but our execution was not.  I'm very pleased with the way we approached the game from a mental standpoint. We had great focus for a team that spent four hours on the bus. But we're struggling too much on the offensive end, and that was obvious at Eckerd. We're just not shooting the ball anywhere near what we, as a coaching staff, thought we would. We're not getting much one on the offensive end and that's putting too much pressure on our defense to keep us in games. I give our guys a lot of credit because they've been tuned in defensively. I need to do more to help them on the offensive end. They're struggling to score and as a team we're struggling to find a rhythm and a comfort level. We're not even remotely close to clicking on offense, but hopefully we can figure it out for these guys because they're giving us great effort."
 
Q: First up this week is Barry. The Bucs have arguably the best player in the SSC in Yunio Barrueta and the team is again one of the best in the league. Besides being a bit of a rivalry game, can you talk about the other challenges playing this squad?
 
GT: "Yunio Barrueta is the best player in DII men's basketball. Period. Not even close for anyone else. And we've seen some great individuals so far this year. The kid at Lane College, Terrance Bridgeman, is sensational; he's a dream. West Texas A&M and Arkansas Tech have a couple of great ones. But Barrueta is at a different level from the other guys playing in DII. He could play on any DI team in the country and be successful. He's the LeBron James of the Sunshine State Conference, and that's not a stretch. What'd he do against a good Rollins team? Forty points. Ten or 12 rebounds. 10-of-16 on 3's. Those are crazy numbers. And he's doing it every night for them. Here's the scary thing about Barry: I honestly believe if Barrueta walked away from their team today, they'd still have the best team in our league; that's how good they are. Obviously Barrueta makes them a special team and a team with a legitimate chance to win the national championship.
 
"I've coached in two leagues that produced DII national champions. When I was in the Peach Belt Conference at Augusta State, Kennesaw State won the DII national championship one year. And last year, in the SSC, Florida Southern won it all. Both of those teams were sensational, and Barry has a chance to do what Florida Southern and Kennesaw State did. Offensively, they're probably better than either of those teams. They have great guard play, solid post play, and everybody – and I mean EVERYBODY – on their team can score 20 or more points on a given night, sometimes without breaking a sweat. They are the best shooting team I've ever seen at this level. They don't have a weak link on offense. They're making better than 4 out of 10 threes as a team, which is amazing, but I swear when you watch them play you feel like they never miss a shot. They score so easily that it hurts your feelings. You can have a great defensive possession and still give up a three.  They push the pace, they run as well as anyone, they rebound well, they share the ball. Unless you're coaching or playing against them, they're really fun to watch.  They're a very good DI team playing in a DII league. You have to have exceptional willpower and determination to hang with them for 40 minutes because there will be stretches in the game where they can break the spirit and will of a normal team. You have to dig in and keep grinding and obviously you have to be able to score with them. My greatest concern against them is being able to keep up offensively. If you play Barry and hope to be around at the end, you can't have the shooting droughts and scoring lapses that we've experienced in most of our games."
 
Q: After that, you bring in perennial power Florida Southern to the NSU Arena on Saturday.  Despite their struggles in the early season, one would guess that the Mocs' reputation can still sort of precede them, can't it?
 
GT: "Florida Southern lost five senior starters and a coaching staff who led them to a 37-1 record and the national championship last year. I don't know any team that could survive those kind of losses without some slippage. Florida Southern has a lot of guys back from their championship team who are as good as most anyone not named Barrueta. They've gone through some growing pains with a new coaching staff and a new system, which is to be expected even if you are a program with the success and history of a Florida Southern, but they're as capable of winning this league as just about anyone. Let's not forget that they beat Barry earlier in the year, and they've got some very good wins. They've got a whole bunch of talented players and a good guards as well as good big men. They may not repeat as national champs this year, but they're certainly capable of being the best team in our league on a given night, as they proved in their win over Barry. As the year goes on, they will only get better as they adjust to life without the seniors who graduated and as they grow more comfortable with their new coaching staff. They're a very talented, very dangerous team. There's nothing wrong with Florida Southern that a couple of back-to-back wins won't cure." 
 
Q: Finally, with Saturday being the ESPN3 DII Game of the Week, how excited are you and the team to showcase both the program and the university on a national scale?
 
GT: "Honestly, I haven't given it much thought. I'll think about it after we play Barry Wednesday night. Obviously it's great for NSU to showcase our campus and our facilities. It's great exposure for the entire athletic department but more importantly, it's great exposure for the university as a whole. This is such a beautiful, special place … my friends who see our campus and our facilities for the first time marvel at what we have here and almost all of them call it a 'hidden gem.' So it will be nice to get our face out there and give people an opportunity to see a truly great university that maybe they hadn't seen or didn't know about before. We had an opportunity to play on ESPN last season at DI Florida Gulf Coast and I thought our guys did a great job of responding to the moment. They put on a great show and won a lot of respect and admiration from basketball fans who had never seen us before. Hopefully we'll play hard, play with great energy, and represent the university with class. But those are things we want to do every day we put on a Sharks uniform. There's a lot of hoopla surrounding an ESPN game, but when they throw the ball up all of that goes out the window. It's a conference basketball game against a great opponent with a rich history. It's a great opportunity for our guys to get some exposure for themselves, their team and their university. But once the game begins it won't be special because ESPN is in town, it will be special because we have another chance to play on a Saturday afternoon in the best DII basketball league in America. With or without TV, every Sunshine State Conference game is a special experience for the players, coaches and fans."