The Seahawks topped Northeastern to extend their winning streak to five games

UNCW 77, Northeastern 54

Box Score | Siddle Postgame

For the second straight Thursday evening, the Seahawks went on the road, barged right through the front door and didn’t even wipe their feet before they started ransacking the place.

Unlike last time, though, UNCW didn’t leave an opening for the host to fight back, as the Hawks delivered a 40-minute onslaught of attacks in a 77-54 victory over Northeastern at Matthews Arena.

Shykeim Phillips finished with 17 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists to lead the Seahawks, while Trazarien White had 13 points and 5 rebounds and KJ Jenkins added 12 points.

UNCW’s winning streak stands at a season-best five games, as the Seahawks now sit one game back in the CAA standings after Drexel’s loss on Thursday night.

Let’s get into our takeaways.

The Time has Come

After UNCW’s dominant performance in the season-opening win at UNC Asheville, that version of the Seahawks seemingly made in consistent appearances over the remainder of nonconference play.

It was a strange feeling to have about a team that won at Kentucky and went 9-3 before getting into the CAA schedule, but it wasn’t just us.

Coach Takayo Siddle made a couple of references to that idea on his Dec. 19 show:

“I thought everybody, everybody was really confident after that game and they understood, ‘OK, this is what we could become,’ … right now I’m searching for us to be that dominant again, I am. But we got a little taste of it in that Asheville game, and we’ll definitely get that mojo back.”

“I want to see us get more gritty, I want to see us get tougher … it’s kind of like we’re holding back a little bit. I want us to just bust through the door and just be that dominant team, and I know it takes time, but as a coach you just want it now.”

There’s no doubt the Seahawks are getting closer to that potential, particularly in the past week in completely dominating three of the four halves against Elon and Northeastern, with a gritty win over Charleston between those games.

One of the more encouraging points from Thursday’s win over the Huskies was the businesslike approach of the Seahawks, who rolled into a sleepy arena (official attendance: 802), created their own energy and got to work.

After the emotion of Saturday night, it would have been easy to spend a few days feeling a little too good, checking out highlights and then coming out flat.

Instead, we saw a team that knows exactly what it wants to do, how it plans to do it, and wastes no time getting from Point A to Point B — even if there’s an opponent in the way.

Thursday, that meant taking what the defense presented on the perimeter, but still sticking to the UNCW identity.

When Northeastern went zone, the Seahawks whipped the ball to open shooters and hit 8 of 16 from 3-point range in the first half thanks to efficient drive-and-kick looks.

When the Huskies stepped out run the Hawks off the line, UNCW went ahead and scored 26 points in the paint in the second half and bullied its way to a 33-23 edge on the boards — an area that Northeastern has excelled this season.

“I thought the energy and force we played with from start to finish won that game for us,” Siddle said. “I’m very proud of the guys. Like I told them in the locker room, it’s not easy to come in here and do what we did, and I thought we completely zapped them with the force we were playing with. We zapped them from the beginning, and they never really had a chance.”

Posted this on Twitter during the game, but worth a mention here as well. Just after a Shykeim Phillips layup made it 62-40 with about 10 minutes to go, Siddle called an Angry Timeout to make a point about transition defense.

It’s all about putting in the work, building confidence from preparation and then playing to a standard, and right now, UNCW is consistently closer to its own standard than it has been all season.

In the recent past, we’ve seen a hot shooting start turn into settling for average looks on the perimeter, but that absolutely wasn’t the case on Thursday as the Seahawks stuck to who they are and what they believe in.

“My main message coming in here was to make sure that we understood that we needed to execute the gameplan and continue to do that throughout the season because that gives us our best chance to win,” Siddle said. “I thought our guys really locked into that tonight.”

Strength in the Flock

In all, Siddle played 11 guys at least seven minutes while only one — Phillips — hit the 30-minute mark.

A total of 10 Seahawks scored while seven hit at least one 3-pointer in an all-around balanced night.

Back when we talked to Brian Mull on the podcast before the CAA schedule began, his reasoning for picking UNCW to win the league was that the Hawks had more good players than everyone else.

Simple concept, but often, it’s counter to what coaches are comfortable with in terms of cutting their rotations down to eight (or so) players as the conference season picks up.

After initially shortening his bench, Siddle has gone the opposite direction and expanded his rotation, and with Maleeck Harden-Hayes out with a leg injury, there’s even more opportunity.

Several players are taking advantage, but none more than Nolan Hodge and Noah Ross, who have both made major strides in the past two weeks.

Hodge went from not appearing the Drexel game and just five minutes at Towson, to averaging nearly 20 minutes over the past four games.

Ross, meanwhile, has seen his minutes increase thanks to his ability as a defender and rebounder, and on Thursday, he posted one of his better scoring games with 7 points on 3 of 3 shooting.

Siddle also had praise for Nick Farrar, Shemar Rathan-Mayes and Ahmard Harvey, who had 2 points, 5 rebounds and 2 assists in 9 minutes as he works his way back into shape.

“Hodge came in right off the bench and gave us some really good minutes; he banged a couple of threes, got some rebounds, so we’ll continue to get him minutes so he can keep on developing into the player I think he can become.

I thought Shemar came in, he executed our end-of-half situation perfectly. We had fouls to give, and he fouled at the right time, and they had to throw up an off-balance shot at the end.

Majority of guys did a good job coming in off the bench; Ahmard gave us some good minutes, Nick came in and gave us some pretty good minutes. That was a total team win, and it’s going to take that all year for us.”

Road Warriors

This was UNCW’s seventh true road win of the season and eighth away from Trask Coliseum, as the Seahawks also won a neutral-site game.

Western Carolina and UMass-Lowell lead the nation at eight road wins, while the Seahawks are among seven teams (including our old pals James Madison) with seven.

Wins away from home all a major benefit in RPI, KenPom and the NET, and while UNCW isn’t presently in line for at-large NCAA Tournament consideration, road performances like this are part of the formula for getting into the conversation.

Home teams have won 32 of 50 games in CAA play, which ranks 10th out of 32 conferences. It’s not easy to go into someone else’s gym and get a win, and that’s another data point toward this team’s maturity and toughness.

Up Next

The Seahawks head south to Long Island, where they’ll meet up with Stony Brook on Saturday afternoon (4 p.m.) in another game that will be televised nationally on CBS Sports Network.

The Seawolves (10-10, 3-4) used a 48-point second half to knock off Monmouth on Thursday night. Stony Brook had Hofstra on the ropes on Monday night, but the Pride made a late run to escape.

Around the CAA

Towson 70, Drexel 67

The first-place Dragons made a late push, but the Tigers held on to hand Drexel its first CAA loss of the season.

Nendah Tarke had 18 points and 5 rebounds to lead the way, while Christian May chipped in 15 points and 10 rebounds for the Tigers. After a 5-5 start overall, Towson is 7-3 since Tarke received an eligibility waiver.

Drexel shot an uncharacteristic 39 percent from the field as it saw a seven-game winning streak come to an end.

Charleston 107, Hampton 86

Ante Brzovic picked up where he left off on Saturday, hitting 15 of 19 from the field on his way to 31 points to go with 12 rebounds as the Cougars bounced back from consecutive losses.

Charleston had a 46-26 rebounding edge and hit 54.5 percent from the field, including 14 3-pointers.

Campbell 78, Elon 68

The college hoops got a look at Anthony Dell’Orso on CBS Sports Network, as the skilled sophomore wing scored 29 points on 10 of 14 shooting to lead the Camels to a victory over the Phoenix.

Stony Brook 72, Monmouth 65

The Seawolves got 18 points from Aaron Clarke and 12 apiece from Tyler Stephenson-Moore and Dean Noll en route to an upset of the Hawks.

Monmouth’s Xander Rice, who had been terrorizing CAA defenses, was held to 18 points — his lowest scoring night in conference play — on 2 of 8 from beyond the arc.

After a generating some buzz with a 2-0 CAA start and physical play, the Hawks have dropped four of five.

Delaware 90, N.C. A&T 71

Jyare Davis and Niels Lane scored 22 points apiece, while Gerald Drumgoole added 21 and Christian Ray finished with 12 points and 16 rebounds to lead the Blue Hens.

Landon Glasper had 22 points to lead the Aggies, who had a three-game winning streak snapped.

Hofstra 64, William & Mary 55

DStone Dubar scored 14 points, Tyler Thomas had 13 and Jaquan Carlos had 8 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists to help the Pride to its third straight win.

Gabe Dorsey hit 8 of 14 3-pointers on his way to 26 points for the Tribe, which has lost four straight.