The University of Charleston men's basketball team kept its good fortunes going on Thursday night, winning its fourth game in a row by beating West Virginia Wesleyan on the road.
The Golden Eagles return to the Wehrle Athletic Arena at 4 p.m. Saturday hoping to keep that win streak going against Glenville State. In order to do that, UC knows that it must continue doing the things at which it has improved over the course of the last few weeks. Much of that begins on the defensive end of the floor.
In wins this season, the Golden Eagles (14-9 overall, 8-9 Mountain East Conference) have allowed opponents to shoot 37.2 percent from the field. That number jumps to 51 percent in the team's nine losses. The last three games have been the first times that Charleston has held MEC teams to less than 70 points.
"When we defend, everything seems to get better - we rebound better, we get out in transition more and get easy buckets," UC coach Dwaine Osborne said. "When you do those things, you get into a flow better and things come together.
"We have to try to keep plugging away at that and try to keep getting better with that."
The Golden Eagles will have a tough challenge in a Glenville State team that won the earlier meeting between the two schools. The Pioneers (9-12, 6-11) are able to spread the floor with a number of versatile players who can make plays from the perimeter and also get to the rim.
GSC beat West Virginia State 84-78 on Thursday.
"They've got a lot of guys they can put out there and they can all make shots," Osborne said of the Pioneers. "They can really stretch you out and cause problems that way, and we struggled to guard them at times because of that when we played them the first time. So, hopefully, we are better at that and we've improved some since then so we can do a better job against that this time around."
For West Virginia State, the quest to find its way out of its five-game losing streak continues at 4 p.m. Saturday at West Virginia Wesleyan (11-12, 8-9).
The Yellow Jackets (6-17, 3-14) have lost five in a row and 12 of their last 13. West Virginia State will go into Saturday's game shorthanded once again as injuries have hit the team hard in the last few weeks.
Brent Bauer, Jayson Hankins and Cody Morris did not play on Thursday, putting three of the Yellow Jackets' five starters out of the lineup. Bauer and Hankins are two of the team's top three scorers and all three are among the eight WVSU players averaging more than 15 minutes per game.
"All we can do is get back to work and try to get better and be ready to try to move past this with the guys we have," West Virginia State coach Bryan Poore said. "It's tough to miss those guys because they're a big part of what we do."
But even though they don't have their full complement of players, Poore said he likes the way he has seen his team fight to try to climb out of its hole. The next step is to find players ready to step up and make the plays needed to get back in the win column.
"We've got to just look to the next man up," Poore said. "You have to try to pick your head up and get back to work. It's tough right now for them, but now we're going to see what kind of character we really have."
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.