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Monday, January 15, 2001
Islanders need victory over Albany to reach .500
A&M-Corpus Christi team has racked up consecutive victories thanks its hot shooting
By Mark Zuckerman
Caller-Times
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| Associated Press |
| A&M-CC guard Sennai Atsbeha (20) (shown against Cal-Poly) scored 15 points during the Islanders’ 90-85 win over Centenary on Saturday. |
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's players and coaches back from last year's inaugural season know how hard the Islanders had to battle down the stretch to finish with a 13-13 record.
So with an opportunity to reach the .500 mark in mid-January upon them, the Islanders see tonight's home game against Albany as a potential turning point for the remainder of the season.
"The bottom line is this is not a young team anymore," said head coach Ronnie Arrow, whose squad improved to 8-9 with a 90-85 win Saturday over Centenary. "We want to beat last year's record."
Conventional wisdom says that goal is attainable. A&M-Corpus Christi endured through a difficult schedule the first half of the season and now will finish out with games mostly against other Division I independents, such as the 4-12 Albany team that comes to Memorial Coliseum tonight.
Arrow has said all along that the experience of playing - and in some cases beating - top competition early in the season should pay off for A&M-Corpus Christi.
"We stayed with Texas, we beat Texas Tech," Arrow said. "We need to show that same intensity against every team we play. Whenever we go play somebody, we're representing the state of Texas. We need to prove to other people that we are for real and that Texas has good basketball."
With two straight wins under their belts (113-108 in overtime over Cal Poly last Monday and Saturday's 5-point victory over Centenary), the Islanders have shown they can put points on the board with anybody. A&M-Corpus Christi shot a season-best 54.1 percent from the field at Cal Poly and followed that up with a 52-percent shooting performance Saturday against the Gents.
Reaching, and then cracking, the .500 barrier would mean a lot to a team that has seen its share of ups and downs all season.
"It definitely would," said guard Sennai Atsbeha, who scored 10 of his 15 points Saturday in the first 2:18 of the game. "We really haven't been playing good basketball lately. We need to get back to respectability. We're a better team than we've been lately."
Staff writer Mark Zuckerman can be reached at 886-3747 or by e-mail at zuckermanm@caller.com
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© 2001,
a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.
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