WEST CHESTER, Pa.- The West Chester men's basketball team (10-8, - PSAC) returns to action on Wednesday evening vs a familiar foe, whom they just faced on Monday evening as the Shepherd University Rams pay a visit to Hollinger Field House.
With a head coach in the midst of his 14
th season as head coach
Damien Blair is, a first-time occurrence is far from the norm, however, Wednesday night will bring with it something that Coach Blair and the Golden Rams have yet to experience in his head coaching career. Wednesday evening's game against Shepherd will be the first time in Coach Blair's tenure at the helm in which West Chester has faced the same team in back-to-back regular season games. The closest West Chester came to this phenomenon in prior years was during the 2018-19 season when West Chester played its final four games of the year vs Shippensburg and IUP. During the 2018-19 season, West Chester closed out its regular-season slate with a hard-fought home loss vs Shippensburg before vanquishing the Raiders in the Quarterfinal round of the PSAC Tournament just days later. This victory, set up a matchup at top-seed IUP in the PSAC Semifinals, which the Golden Rams dropped but still qualified for the NCAA Tournament. In the NCAA Tournament, West Chester learned it would return to Indiana, Pa. for a rematch vs the same Crimson Hawks squad who it had fallen to a week earlier. Unfortunately, West Chester suffered a similar result in the NCAA Tournament, falling to IUP again to bring a strong 2018-19 season to a close.
On Wednesday evening, West Chester will look to even the season series vs the PSAC's southern-most member as the Golden Rams fell to the Rams in Shepherdstown, W.V. on Monday evening by a final of 70-65. In this game, West Chester led for much of the contest and held the largest lead of the game when it pulled ahead by nine points early in the second half, but it was a 6-0 run over the last 2:32 of regulation, which allowed Shepherd to erase a late deficit and earn the 70-65 victory over the Golden Rams. 65 points was the lowest scoring output of the season for the Golden Rams and the team also pulled in a season-low 26 rebounds in the setback. Additionally, Dade who has been a steadying force for the Golden Rams this season, scoring in double figures in 16 of 18 games on the year was the only Golden Ram to score in double figures in the setback, finishing with 21 points, marking the first time this season that West Chester has not had multiple players in double figures. Despite the setback, West Chester's bench continued to show its might in this game, outscoring Shepherd 23-6 as the Golden Ram bench is now averaging 31.3 points per game while allowing opponents to score an average of just 14.8 points per contest.
Wednesday evening's setback lowered the Golden Rams scoring average on the year ever so slightly, as the Purple and Gold are now averaging 84.7 points per game, which is second-best in the PSAC as Cal (Pa.) was able to pass the Golden Rams on this leaderboard with their 85.5 points per game scoring average. Still Wednesday night's contest will bear similarity to Monday night's in that it will see one of the best offenses in the PSAC face off against the second best defense in the PSAC. On Monday evening, defense won the day as Shepherd, who entered play, allowing opponents an average of 64.9 points per game stayed true to form, limiting the potent Golden Ram offense to just 65 points in the victory.
For Shepherd, Monday night was a stellar night for many of its players as Kyle Daggett finished with a double-double coming away with 12 rebounds along with 17 points while Jon Preston, scored over double what he had been averaging to this point in the season (averaging 7.5 points per game entering play on Wednesday), finishing with a team-high 20 points to lead the Rams to the victory over their northern visitors.
Up Next
West Chester will be back in action on Friday night inside Hollinger Field House against PSU-Brandywine beginning at 7 p.m. in what will be its final non-league game of the 2021-22 campaign.
