MARS HILL, N.C. – With four games left in the South Atlantic Conference regular season, Carson-Newman hops on the bus for the penultimate time making the short journey up the mountain to take on Mars Hill Wednesday night at 5:30 p.m.
"We can't get complacent," Carson-Newman coach Mike Mincey said. "We are going to go over and play Mars Hill and play them just as hard as we did [on Monday]. Hopefully we can keep putting forth the offensive effort and I thought we played pretty good defense."
Mincey's side is looking to lock in a 20-win season for the fifth consecutive campaign not shortened due to Covid. The current streak is the longest stretch by the program since a string of seven straight 20-win seasons from 1983-84 through 1989-90, 30 seasons ago. During the current stretch the team has a 130-38 record, good for a .774 winning percentage.
On Nov. 23 Mincey became the third coach in school history to win 200 games on the bench, Wednesday he can tie Lewis Bivens for the second-most victories in Carson-Newman (19-5, 16-4) history with his 216th. Eddie Carter holds the all-time edge with 250 during his tenure.
The Orange and Blue have buried at least seven three-pointers in four straight games after recording a total of five such contests in the first 20 outings of the year. In that time the team is making 41 percent from long distance with two players drilling six in a game. In 14 of the prior 16 before this streak, the team had hit six or fewer.
The two clubs are facing off for the 75th affair as C-Ns is leading Mars Hill (1-21, 1-19) 5-18 behind 11 straight wins and 18 of the last 19. During the current 11-game winning streak, C-N has scored no fewer than 86 points winning by at least 19 and as many as 63 for an average of 45 per game. Mincey's crew has eclipsed triple digits in five of the last nine. The lone blemish in this recent stretch came at Stanford Arena on Feb. 3, 2016, an 83-82 comeback win for the Lions.
When the Lady Eagles beat the Lions 101-62 on Dec. 15, Addison Byrd (Nashville, Tenn.) flirted with a triple double-double racking up 16 points adding career highs with 18 rebounds and eight assists in 33 minutes of play. Four players scored at least 16 in the win.
Mars Hill has one win this season, a 61-59 victory over Lincoln Memorial on Dec. 11 on its home floor. Nineteen of the team's 21 wins this year have been by double figures as the unit is being outscored by an average of 26 points per game this year, the fourth-widest spread of any team in the nation.
All told the team's losing streak sits at 13 games, all of which have come by double figures and seven by at least 30. The skid is the 10th-longest active mark in the nation and the second-longest in region behind Converse's 15 in a row.
The Lions rank last in 12 different statistical categories including scoring offense (54.4), field-goal percentage (32 percent), scoring defense (80.3) and field-goal percentage defense (45.2). The team has been able to get to the charity stripe with the third-most frequency but converts at a 67 percent clip, the third-lowest.
De'Ja Marshall carries the majority of the load posting 15 points per game, good for ninth in the league, and put up 26 on 11-for-19 shooting in the first meeting. She is second in the SAC in double-doubles (10), field-goal attempts (364), fifth in rebounding (8.3) and seventh in steals (41)
Broadcast coverage airs on the Eagle Sports Network starting at 5:15 for "The Appalachian Electric Cooperative Countdown to Tip-Off" on Mountain Sports 106.3 (WPFT-FM, Sevierville) with an audio stream available on cneagles.com/live free of charge.
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