In a season that began with high hopes and has been plague by inconsistency, the men's basketball team will try to build on the biggest shot of the year when they face Navy this Saturday at 3:00 p.m. in Leede Arena.
P.J. Halas's '98 long-distance three-pointer with six seconds left to give the Big Green a 72-71 victory at Lafayette last Saturday will serve as the building block of what the Big Green hopes will be a return to early-season form, when they ran off six straight victories and owned the nation's longest winning streak at 10 games.
"P.J's shot was a spark, it was time someone made a clutch shot since people had been making them against us," co-Captain Jacob Capps '96 said. "It helped to raise our confidence going into this weekend's game against a tough opponent such as Navy."
As the team will not receive an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament, Saturday's non-conference game against the Midshipmen will help to serve as a final tune-up for the rest of the Ivy League schedule. The only way the Big Green can advance to the tournament is to win the Ivy League.
Saturday's game marks the last non-Ivy League contest for the Big Green, who start an important stretch of Ivy League games that includes Brown, Princeton and Pennsylvania in the following two weeks.
"A win in our last non-conference game over a good team such as Navy would definitely put us in the right direction heading into the rest of the Ivy League schedule," guard Sea Lonergan '97 said.
The Big Green, 9-6 overall (3-1 in Ivy League), who faced the last place Patriot League team last weekend, must take their game to the next level this weekend when the Midshipmen, the Patriot League's top team with a 9-8 record, come to Hanover.
The Midshipmen are a strong, physical team that play solid defense and out-rebound their opponents.
"We need to rebound because they get a ton of offensive rebounds which has hurt us before," Capps said. "They also play pressure defense so we need to remain patient in our offense and look for other options if the first option is not available."
Navy is coming off of a 30-point victory over Army, a team which the Big Green defeated 73-72 in Hanover in December.
