GREENSBORO – Give the North Carolina A&T men's basketball team credit. The Aggies can follow a game plan to a tee and have done it consistently throughout their current slate of games against the top teams in the Coastal Athletic Association.
What A&T can't do is create depth while players are out with injuries. Again, on Saturday, the Aggies played one of the top teams in the conference to a 30-minute stalemate before wearing down in a 62-54 loss to the Delaware Blue Hens at Corbett Sports Center. The Aggies lost their fifth straight to fall to 7-20 overall and 5-9 in CAA play. Delaware improved to 17-10 overall and 9-5 in league play.
"If there were a way to petition the NCAA to stop the game at halftime, I would have been in favor of that," said A&T head coach Monté Ross. "It was an unbelievable execution of the game plan by our guys in the first half."
A drive to the basket by junior guard Ahmad Hamilton and two free throws from Camian Shell gave the Aggies their biggest lead of the first half, 20-11, with nine minutes to play. Over the next 4 ½ minutes, however, the Blue Hens outscored A&T 9-2 as Gerald Drumgoole's 3-pointer cut A&T's lead to 22-20.
But Hamilton came through for the Aggies again when he cut to the basket and took a pass from Jason Murphy to put the Aggies ahead by four. Freshman guard Jalal McKie then pulled up from the elbow and netted a jumper to push the lead to six. After Drumgoole got to the basket and scored, Shell returned the favor with a drive to hoop and score to give the Aggies a 28-22 lead at halftime.
In the second half, the Aggies continued to execute the game plan, but the same looks they were converting in the first half would not go down in the second half. Yet, the Aggies held a six-point lead 4 ½ minutes into the second 20 minutes as Kyle Duke's 3-pointer gave A&T a 35-29 advantage. Delaware knocked A&T's lead down to one over the next two minutes as Tyler House's three made it a 39-38 game.
Sophomore forward Evan Joyner put some distance between A&T and Delaware with a 10-footer and a sweeping drive to the basket for a layup. But the Aggies went into a horrific drought from the floor after Joyner's back-to-back scores. A&T made their next field goal when there was 5:45 remaining in the game.
In the 6 ½ minutes the Aggies did not connect on a field goal, the Blue Hens outscored A&T 17-4. Despite that, when Shell ended the field-goal drought, the Aggies only trailed 55-47. But the Aggies never got any closer than eight the rest of the way. They again had to play without three key players, leading scorer Landon Glasper, veteran player Jeremy Robinson and second-leading rebounder Nikolaos Chitikoudis.
"I'm not trying to be smart, but they're not trying to miss them," said Ross about the Aggies' latest scoring drought. "That's basketball. Sometimes, the ball just doesn't drop for you. It seems like it hasn't dropped for us for a number of games now."
Shell led A&T with 17 points, and McKie added 10. Joyner helped the Aggies out-rebound the Blue Hens 33-32 as he finished the game with 10 boards. The injuries have dropped A&T from a three-way tie for second on Jan. 20 to a three-way tie for 10th in the CAA. That puts A&T in the 11-14 seed range.
Any team seeded between 11th and 14th would have to win five times in five days to win the March 8-12 CAA tournament in Washington, DC. The Aggies hope to get healthy before that happens. The Aggies travel to the New York/New Jersey area this week to face Stony Brook on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. and Monmouth on Saturday at 2 p.m.
