SportsCollege

Actions

ODU men one-third of the way thru Conference-USA season

Posted at 11:50 PM, Jan 19, 2017
and last updated 2017-01-19 23:50:57-05

NORFOLK, Va. - The Old Dominion men’s basketball team (11-7, 4-2 C-USA) travels to Charlotte (8-9, 2-4 C-USA) for a Saturday night showdown at Halton Arena. Tipoff is slated for 8:00 p.m. EST.

ODU men's basketball

ODU men's basketball

ODU will go nearly three weeks without a home game. The Monarchs, winners of 13 of their last 17 conference games dating back to last season, are a third of the way through this year's league slate.

"As March starts rolling around, everybody will ramp it up," explained Old Dominion head coach Jeff Jones. "Right now is really important if you want to be in the mix."

"This far down in the season, a lot of people are beat up," said ODU guard B.J. Stith. "School started back up, and there are a lot of other things pulling us in different directions."

Old Dominion enters Saturday’s contest with the fifth best scoring defense in the country, as the Monarchs allow just 59.5 points per game. Charlotte on the other hand is averaging 83.2 points per outing in conference play.

Old Dominion ranks eighth nationally for offensive rebounds per game (14.72), while Denzell Taylor ranks sixth in the country for hauling down 4.00 offensive rebounds per game.

In conference play, B.J. Stith leads the Monarchs in scoring (16.7 ppg), while Zoran Talley (15.5 ppg) and Ahmad Caver (13.7 ppg) follow.

Saturday night marks the 33rd all-time meeting between these two schools. ODU leads the all-time series, 19-13.