West Chester Men's Hoops Gets Familiar Foe In NCAA Tourney Opener
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The West Chester University men's basketball team is headed to the Division II NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons. The Golden Rams are the #5 seed in the Atlantic Region and they will open things up on Saturday by taking on the #4 seed Kutztown down in Wheeling, West Virginia.
West Chester is 23-6 on the season. The Golden Rams earned an at-large berth to the tourney after being upended in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference title game by Mercyhurst, 70-67.
"Really excited about getting in," West Chester head coach Damien Blair tells KYW Newsradio. "Obviously, the kids are disappointed in this last weekend's finish. We definitely wanted to get the automatic (bid) and hopefully that would've pumped us up a little bit in the region. But we're fortunate enough to get in and hopefully we can create some noise when we get in there."
Listen to the entire interview with West Chester's Damien Blair
West Chester features four players averaging double figures, with freshman guard Malik Jackson leading the way at 15.9 ppg. Senior forward Matt Wiseley pours in 12 points a night and leads the team in rebounding at 11.4 a game.
Now Kutztown also calls the PSAC home and these two teams met twice during the regular season with West Chester losing both match-ups (84-75 on 1/27 and 81-77 on 2/24).
"They are a very good team, well coached," Blair says. "But I think, in order for us to beat them, we've got to do a really good job defending pick and rolls, we've got to keep them off the glass and more importantly, we've got to score. The last couple of times we played them, we didn't play really well, we didn't shoot the ball well. If we're going to beat a really good team as in Kutztown, we've got to make shots, got to make our foul shots and we've got to take one possession at a time."
Blair talks about other keys to tournament success for his team.
"We've got to play together and we've got to play hard," Blair says. "Over the last week, we've played, I think, harder than most of our opponents, we've played together. Then, most importantly, we defended. If you defend, now when you get the ball on the offensive end it's a matter of sharing the ball and taking available shots and putting yourself in a position to be successful. So if we play with a lot of intensity and we defend, I think we'll be in good shape."
In West Chester's last NCAA Tournament appearance in 2014, the Golden Rams lost in the first round to IUP, 75-68.
Saturday's game tips-off at 8:30pm.
You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.
