Eagles, Huskies Clash in GLIAC Men's Basketball Tourney Opener
February 27, 2003

No one’s planting seeds at this time of the year, unless you’re the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Full seeding took place this last week as the league prepared for the eight-team postseason basketball tournament. The Ashland University Eagles are seeded eighth and will travel to Houghton, MI, this week to meet the top seed, Michigan Tech.

The AU-MTU game is one of four first-round matchups. In the other games, Hillsdale will visit Findlay, Gannon will entertain Wayne State and Grand Valley State will go to Northern Michigan. The GLIAC semifinals and finals will be played Friday and Saturday, Mar. 6-7, at the league’s highest seeded team. This year’s format calls for all games to be played at on-campus sites. That’s a change from the past several seasons where all eight teams went to a neutral site for the tournament.

The Eagles will bring a 16-10 record into the first-round game. AU went 1-1 last week, winning at Mercyhurst and losing at Gannon. Ashland and Tech played once this season at Tech. The Huskies won that game, 74-50.

The Huskies are 25-2, 17-1 in league play. Last week MTU was ranked first in the country. That will change this week as the Huskies were upset at home by Grand Valley State, 42-40, last Thursday.

It’s hard to find fault with anything Tech does. The Huskies lead the GLIAC in nine statistical categories including scoring defense (65.4 ppg.), scoring margin (+14.3) and rebound average (+6.4). Grand Valley had success by slowing the game down, but doing that brings no guarantee of success. Tech’s a veteran team with very few holes. The Huskies are the deepest team in the league. At the beginning of the season the Huskies were considered the league’s best team, a unit that could prosper on a national level. MTU has done nothing to put a damper on those predictions.

J.T. Luginski, a 6-7 228-pound senior center, leads Tech in both scoring (18.3 ppg.) and rebounding (6.2 rpg.). He’s sixth in the league in scoring, 12th in rebounding and second in field goal percentage (.606). He’s been the GLIAC North Division player of the week three times this season.

Matt Cameron, a 6-7 senior forward, is averaging 16.7 ppg., and is seventh in field goal percentage (.625). He’s the league leader in three-point field goal percentage (.505). Cameron’s a two-time all-conference selection and a year ago was the GLIAC player of the year. Josh Buettner, a 6-8, 230-pound sophomore forward, is the GLIAC leader in field goal percentage (.625). Jason Marcotte sets the tone in the backcourt. The 5-10 sophomore is fifth in the GLIAC in assists (106/3.9 apg.).

As those numbers indicate, Tech presents plenty of problems. It will be interesting to see how the Eagles approach those many challenges.

AU features a backcourt with two seniors who have scored more than 1,000 points in their career. Isaac Kincaid is averaging 18.5 ppg., and leads the team in scoring for the third straight year. He’s the GLIAC’s third-leading scorer. Point guard Angelo Edwards is averaging 14.8 ppg. He’s 13th in the league in scoring and seventh in assists (95/3.7).

Three other seniors are expected to join those two in the starting lineup. Swingman Tom Church is averaging 8.9 ppg. Senior forward Justin Larrick averages 10.4 ppg., and brings down 5.8 rpg. Sophomore center Mike Campbell has been a steady force in the middle. He leads the conference in blocked shots (48/1.85 bpg.), is third in rebounds (9.5 rpg.) and seventh in steals (47./1.8 spg.). Campbell’s rebound per game average is the best by an AU player since Mike King averaged 10.1 rpg., during the 1981-82 season.

Ashland and Michigan Tech have squared off twice before in the GLIAC playoffs. At the end of the 1998-99 season, the Huskies nipped the Eagles, 76-75 in the tournament’s second round. In the 1999-2000 tournament, Tech shaded AU, 72-70 in a first-round game.