It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: time to get those FloSports subscriptions fired up!

If you use this link to sign up, you’ll get the best possible deal, paying either $99.99 for a full year ($8.33/mo) or $14.99 monthly. As part of the CAA’s new deal, we were promised a higher standard of broadcasts around the conference, so we’ll see what happens on that front.

KenPom rankings for UNCW: No. 115 overall; No. 78 offense, No. 185 defense.

KenPom rankings for Drexel: No. 119 overall; No. 182 offense, No. 80 defense.

KenPom forecast: Drexel 70, UNCW 67 (40 percent chance of victory)

Meet the Dragons

Notable Wins: Dec. 2 at Villanova (57-55); Nov. 11 at Winthrop (74-72).
Notable Losses: Dec. 9 at West Virginia (66-60); Dec. 5 at Princeton (81-70); Nov. 26 at Old Dominion (68-61).

Personnel: F Amari Williams (11.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.8 blocks); G Justin Moore (12.6 points, 2.9 assists, 1.6 steals); G Lamar Oden Jr. (7.5 points, 6 rebounds); G Luke House 6.8 points, 3.7 rebounds, 37.3% 3FG); F Mate Okros (5.9 points, 40% 3FG), G Yame Butler (6.6 points); F Garfield Turner (5.9 points, 4.1 rebounds).

When Last we Met: UNCW 72, Drexel 71 2OT (Feb. 13); UNCW 73, Drexel 68 (March 5).

Twice last season, the Dragons gave the Hawks everything they could handle, and twice, UNCW escaped with improbable victories — the second of which required rallying from a 12-point deficit with 12 minutes remaining in a CAA quarterfinal game.

Drexel returns almost everyone that played in those games, including a two-time defending CAA Defensive Player of the Year in Williams and a couple of talented guards in Moore and Oden.

Beyond those guys, the Dragons can go 10 deep if necessary, and have several players capable of putting up big scoring numbers, like Okros’ 20-point performance in Monday’s win over Hampton.

As always, Drexel hangs its hat on toughness and defense, holding opponents to 45.5 percent (44th nationally) on 2-point field goal attempts and 30.7 percent (70th) from 3-point range.

Physical Education

UNCW’s athletic training staff is going to be busy on Friday morning, and hopefully, the Dragons will be feeling it too.

When it comes to toughness, defensive effort and grit, no team in the league is doing it better than Drexel over the past few seasons.

And in each of the past seasons, it’s been clear that opponents gameplan to beat UNCW’s skill and versatility with physicality. The Seahawks have won some of those games and lost a few, but among the losses, an opponent’s physicality tends to be among the biggest reasons.

Saturday’s loss to Arkansas might have had a small silver lining, as Coach Takayo Siddle was clearly unhappy with his team’s physicality and toughness in the paint. He tends to get his team’s attention after a loss, and that has surely been the biggest point of emphasis all week.

Last season’s win at Drexel might have been UNCW’s best victory of the entire season — just a complete grown-up win that took every ounce of effort and focus the Seahawks had.

And there’s no doubt the Dragons have spent some time talking about the way UNCW ended their season.

Given the recent history, Drexel’s talent and experience and what’s at stake the conference opener, tonight is going to be an absolute slugfest.

The Dragons are an elite rebounding team, grabbing about 36 percent of their own misses (93rd percentile) on the offensive end and right at 75 percent (86th percentile) on the defensive end. They’ve actually kicked up their offensive rebounding to 42 percent over the past five games (against a few really good teams), which is in the 99th percentile.

It’s going to take everyone giving everything to hang around on the boards. Win or lose, playing in a game like this on Jan. 4 is a benefit for the Seahawks the rest of the way.

The Supporting Cast

Throughout the season, Siddle has mentioned getting more production from his bench and guys not named Trazarien White or Shykeim Phillips.

Saturday, he took things a step further when he mentioned a couple of guys by name.

We’ve got to get more out of other guys; Maleeck (Harden-Hayes), he’s gotta give us more, Donovan (Newby) has to give us more. Those guys have to produce for us on a consistent basis for us to be the team we’re capable of being.

It’s hard to argue with the numbers, as Harden-Hayes, Newby and KJ Jenkins have all mixed brilliance with inconsistency this season.

It’s natural to have some amount of inconsistency in a 10-man (and occasionally 11-man) rotation, but Harden-Hayes has the talent to be First-Team All-CAA — he should be getting good looks and putting them up every night.

In UNCW’s six wins vs. D1 opponents, Harden-Hayes is averaging 10 field goal attempts per game, including six from 3-point range. In losses, his average number of shots goes to 7.7. With that, his free throw attempt numbers drop from 30 percent in wins to 13 percent in losses.

There are any number of reasons he might not be involved offensively in those games — his own passive play, coaches directing the offense elsewhere, or the opponent working to specifically take away his shots.

In any case, it’s a safe bet that we’ll see Siddle and offensive coordinator Paul Hemrick making an effort to get Harden-Hayes involved early tonight.

Newby has just had some strange night-and-day shooting luck, while Jenkins’ shot selection has been a point of emphasis.

It seemed he was well on his way to a great game on Saturday before seemingly suffering a minor leg issue that he played through but was clearly affected.

The likelihood of all three of those guys struggling at the same time seems pretty improbable. The pendulum will swing back one night, and we’ll see the Seahawks put up video games numbers on offense.

Interested in talking hoops with fellow Seahawk fans? Click here to join The Seahawk Perch community chat on Discord!

The Story so Farrar

There are only 200 minutes to go around on any given night, and unfortunately, that’s kept Nick Farrar on the bench lately as the Seahawks have opted fora little more height and defensive ability with Eric Van Der Heijden in that spot.

It sure feels like this matchup is perfect for Farrar to make a difference, using his offensive skills and agility to play inside-out and create problems for Drexel’s traditional big men.

As much as we’d like to credit this thought to some incredible insight, Farrar had 19 points in both games vs. Drexel last season, scoring a total of 38 points in 32 minutes, hitting 8 of 12 attempts from 3-point range and 5 of his 6 2-point looks.

Not only will Farrar be able to generate some looks of his own from the perimeter, but he’ll also be taking Williams away from the basket to help open driving lanes for teammates.

Around the Coastal

Charleston at Hofstra, 7 p.m. (Flo + MSG2)

Without a doubt, the other CAA Game of the Night. Great work by the league office to schedule what are possibly the best four teams against one another in the opener.

Charleston took a couple of losses early but has rebounded well, and looks like a contender thanks to Reyne Smith and Ante Brzovic getting back to himself.

Meanwhile, Tyler Thomas is next up out of the Hofstra Guard Factory. He showed some flashes last season in the shadow of Aaron Estrada, but it’s all Thomas now. He’s capable of going for 40 on any given night, and chances are, we’ll be seeing it sooner than later.

Stony Brook at Northeastern, 7 p.m. (CBS Sports Network)
Towson at Monmouth, 7 p.m. (Flo + SNY)
Hampton at Delaware, 7 p.m. (Flo)
Elon at William & Mary, 7 p.m. (Flo)
Campbell at N.C. A&T, 7 p.m. (Flo)