“Diante Baldwin drives for a layup against Wofford in the Spartans’ defeat against the conference powerhouse”

By Brandon Boyer, Sports Editor

As the second half of the Southern Conference men’s basketball season approached and passed with the changing of the month, the Blue and Gold of Greensboro stayed true to form in their previous two months of play and lost twice last week in two home match-ups.

This time, the current conference leader, the Wofford Terriers and the always strong, Western Carolina Catamounts paid a visit to the Spartans at the Greensboro Coliseum to defeat the home team this past week.

The lost puts the Spartans at the egregious record of 6-17 and a conference record of 2-8

The first match-up of the Thursday-Saturday match-ups came against Wofford, and it was easy to see throughout the meeting why the Terriers lead the mid-major conference with their 9-1 Southern Conference record.

The Spartans were held to a season-low 42 points to Wofford’s 58, in a remarkably low scoring affair, even for the college level.

The Terriers dominated from the floor shooting 60 percent on their shots and cashed in on the continual fouling issue that the Spartans have, scoring from the charity stripe 27 times.

With the Spartans ineffectual shooting combined with the stout defense of the  Wofford Terriers led by head coach Mike Young in his 15th season at the helm of the basketball program, it is not surprising how this game turned out.

Diante Baldwin was the only player for the Blue and Gold who scored in double figures, scoring 11 points on 5-of-12 shooting.

While the game started quickly for UNC-Greensboro, leading 12-2 to start the game and thrilling the 1630 in attendance that Thursday evening, the nerves quickly settled for Wofford and they never really looked back following their early struggles.

“That’s a really good basketball club,” said head coach, Wes Miller in a UNCGSpartans.com interview.

“You can see why they have had so much success this year and why they won the league last year. They made us look bad, especially after the first 8-9 minutes of the game.”

The next game went quite a bit better for the Spartans, as they hosted Western Carolina at the Coliseum on Saturday.

Unfortunately for their aggressive playing and much better scoring efficiency, the Western Carolina Catamounts had just enough to squeeze across the finish line first, by the final score of 78-73.

Though, before credit is given to the Spartans for playing, let’s be honest here.

The reason why the game was so close was because of the fact that Western Carolina has the same fouling issues as UNC-Greensboro, giving up 30 free throws to UNCG.

This sloppy play by the Catamounts provided an extra 21 points to the Blue and Gold’s attacking plan, which the Spartans smartly took advantage of,  but not even free throws were not enough as Wes Miller’s squad could not stop tripping over their own shoelaces and giving away silly fouls, gifting Western Carolina  28 free throw opportunities, of which they converted 19 of their attempts.

We have been close and we have found ourselves on the wrong side consistently,” said Coach Miller according to UNCGspartans.com.

“That is frustrating for our players and our staff. Give Western Carolina a lot of credit as they made big plays down the stretch.”

In the game, UNCG saw nice games from Tavon Saddler and Nicholas Paulos  who combined for 31 points, but shot 9 of 19 for the game and 11 of 13 from the charity line.

The Spartans will desperately look to forget the month of January, as the team recorded only one win for the first month of the new year.

Against VMI on January 14, the team was close in contests such as battles against Furman and the Citadel, and was simply blown out by opponents such as Mercer.

In their second game in February, the Spartans will look to start out completely fresh and reenergized against The Citadel on Saturday in Charleston at 1 p.m.