The ninth seeded Notre Dame College Falcons will battle the eighth seeded Concord Mountain Lions in the opening round of the Mountain East Conference Tournament at WesBanco Arena in Wheeling, West Va. Wednesday. Tip time is set for 8:15 PM. Seventh seeded West Virginia Wesleyan will face #10 seed Urbana in the first game of the night at 6 PM. You can catch all the action as well as get all your tournament coverage on MountainEast.org
Coach Mark Richmond talked about what his team has learned from the beginning of the season until now- and- what he expects in March:
"We expect the games in March to be very similar to the one that we had at Urbana on Saturday. We do not have a whole lot of depth so we need to scratch- claw- and- gang rebound." Richmond stated.
Bruce Hodges has some experience having been on the team that won the MEC Tournament Title last season:
" If we want a chance we gotta come out ready to play from warm ups! We can't be lackadaisical. We just have to play harder than the other team for all 40 minutes and stick together through the tough times."Hodges mentioned.
NDC (9-19 7-15 MEC) is the ninth seed in the tournament thanks to a win against Fairmont State back in January. Having split with Urbana it went to the next tiebreaker- and- that was record against the teams at the top of the conference- and- NDC secured the spot with the win over Fairmont back on January 11th. The Falcons are coming off a 66-65 loss at Urbana in the regular season finale when DeAnthony Owens tip in was waved off as time expired. The Falcons come into Wednesday's contest sixth in the MEC on the offensive end scoring 77.4 points per game- on defense the Falcons are fifth in the conference giving up 79.8 points per night.
Levi Frankland paces NDC at 17.3 points per game-the sophomore from Australia is shooting 54 percent from the field- and- 43 percent from the 3-point line. Owens is not far behind putting up 16.5 points- and a team leading 6.2 rebounds per game. Drew Scarberry contributes 15.9 points per game- grabs 5.6 rebounds per night- and- shoots 35 percent from the 3-point line on the campaign. Jordan Burton leads the team and is eighth in the MEC dishing out 3.6 assists per game to go with his 9.5 points per game. The Falcons are even on the boards on the season. They lost the first meeting with Concord 69-66 in early December- but won 80-63 in South Euclid in late January.
Richmond spoke about the improvement of his team since the beginning of the season:
" We have been through a lot this season both on and off the court. This team is a lot better than it was at the beginning of the year. We had a stretch there where we played three consecutive games against regionally ranked teams before the Urbana game. We did not get the results we wanted in that stretch- but the team got a lot better. Hopefully the experience of that- and- the game against Urbana will be something we learned from and help us going into the tournament."
Concord (11-17 8-14 MEC) is coming off a 104-75 loss to Glenville State to close the regular season. Malik Johnson leads the Mountain Lions at 13.5 points per game- to go with 4.6 rebounds per contest- Trey Brisco is scoring 12.7 per contest- while he is seventh in the MEC dishing out 3.7 assists per night. Ethan Heller tallies 11.6 per game- Kelly Martin scores 11.4 per game- and- grabs 3.9 rebounds per night. Simun Kovac is leading the team in rebounding at 9.2 per contest- while he scores 10 points per game. CU is fifth in rebounding margin being out rebounded by 0.3 (34.6-34.9.) They are eighth in the MEC on offense scoring 77 points per game- while on defense they are allowing a MEC eighth best 81.0 points per night.
Frankland talked about the upcoming tournament:
" Anything can happen. We play our best and we can make a run at this thing."Frankland explained.
The winner will take on #1 seed West Liberty on Friday night.
Other MEC Game Wednesday:
MEC Games Friday:
#1 West Liberty vs 8/9 winner: 6 PM
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