Top-seeded Charleston cruises past Monmouth
WASHINGTON, D.C — After a long layoff couldn’t slow down the surging Charleston Cougars, the question remains if anyone might be able to do so over the next two nights to keep top-seeded Charleston from repeating as conference tournament champions.
Coastal Athletic Association 3-point leader and All-CAA Second Team choice Reyne Smith was limited to just four points while failing to make a 3-pointer for the fifth time this season in the CAA quarterfinals on Sunday afternoon. This comes just over a week after he established a new program mark with 10 made 3s on 15 attempts in a 23-point home win over Campbell on Feb. 29 in the regular-season finale.
“I told Reyne in the locker room — he broke the school record for 3-point makes in a game a [little over a] week ago — and I said, ‘Reyne I don’t care what the outside world says, and what your stat sheet says and what the record book says, you played a better game today,’” Charleston head coach Pat Kelsey said. “I’m not a big plus-minus guy [but] Reyne took two shots and was plus-29 (in 27 minutes). That’s pretty darn impressive… I don’t care what the stat sheet said, Reyne played a phenomenal game.”
It was a balanced offensive attack were junior forwards Ben Burnham (16 points) and Ante Brzovic (15 points), senior transfer forward Frankie Policelli (14 points), and junior guard Kobe Rodgers (13 points) each in double figures to lead Charleston (25-7, 15-3 CAA) to an 83-59 wire-to-wire thrashing of the eighth-seeded Monmouth Hawks (18-15, 10-8 CAA) at Entertainment & Sports Complex.
Entering the tournament as the league’s hottest team, the Cougars extended their winning streak to 10 games while playing for the first time in eight days after earning a double bye to the quarterfinals.
The same type of balance demonstrated by Charleston was shown by Monmouth in a 23-point, second-round win a day earlier over ninth-seeded Campbell. All five Hawks starters, plus another off the bench scored in double figures.
As he normally did this year (like when he scored 34 points in Monmouth’s 94-83 defeat at Charleston Jan. 13), senior guard and All-CAA First Team selection Xander Rice led Monmouth, this time with 16 points. He was harassed by Smith, Rodgers and the rest of the Cougars while missing 13 of 18 shots, including eight of 10 from 3-point range. Only one other Hawk (freshman forward Jaret Valencia) joined Rice in double figures with…
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