The final two games of the regular season were played last week on Wednesday, Feb. 28 and Friday, March 1. The Cajuns needed to win both of these games to secure the fourth seed in the upcoming Sun Belt Tournament to give the team a much needed bye in the bracket.
They were put in this position after a rough stretch of road games against Sun Belt opponents, losing three in a row leading up to their return to the Cajundome. The first of their two matches would be against Troy whom the Cajuns lost to earlier in the year by six.
The match would go terribly for the Cajuns as they did not take the lead a single time in their 87–73 loss to the Trojans.
Two massive issues popped up for the Cajuns, the first was the whole team went cold when it came to shooting threes. The team would combine for 1–12 on three point attempts, with the lone made three coming from freshman guard Brandon Hardy off the bench.
Joe Charles, Kobe Julien and Kentrell Garnett would not make a single three the entire game despite the three having the highest three point field goal percentage on the team.
This also combined with other players struggling to score the entire game. Both Themus Fulks and Garnett would find themselves in a slump the entire game. Despite Fulks 32 minutes of game time and Garnett’s 29, both only combined for a total of five points.
Fulks finished the game going 1–5 and going 1–2 with his free throws. Garnett only went 1–3, with two of those shots being missed three point attempts.
The rest of the team picked up the slack though as the team combined for a field goal percentage of 46%. That would be little consolation though compared to their biggest issue of the game, and that was foul trouble.
The team combined for 24 personal fouls with Kobe Julien being sent off in the second half after racking up five. Joe Charles could have shared the same fate as he accounted for four.
Freshman forward Kyran Ratliff managed to record three despite only being on the court for four minutes of game time.
The Trojans did not let this chance slip as they went nearly perfect on their free throw attempts, going 38–42 making 90.5% of their free throw attempts. The Cajuns performed well enough with the chances given with free throws, completing 74.3% of attempts.
The other issue was turnovers as despite forcing the Trojans to turnover the ball 15 times, the Cajuns accounted for 20 turnovers with Fulks turning it over seven times and Julien turning it over five times.
With the loss the Cajuns were locked out of the fourth seed and now how to take on Southern Miss who had beaten the Cajuns a week earlier in Hattiesburg. The Golden Eagles were looking for a win to take the fifth seed from the Cajuns.
The team though did not allow that to happen, as in the final game of the season the Cajuns managed to fix most of their problems against Southern Miss on their way to a comfortable 77–61 win for their final game of the regular season.
The Cajuns still struggled shooting threes during the game, shooting 6–23 behind the line but they did not struggle in generating points.
The Cajuns recorded a field goal percentage of 42.3% making 30–71 with over half being made from in the paint. Six players scored at least ten points with Joe Charles scoring 16 points and Michael Thomas scoring 15.
The 16 points of Joe Charles was part of his double–double he got during the game with the other part coming with his 14 rebounds. Charles’ 14 contributed to 42 total rebounds for the Cajuns, 12 of which were offensive rebounds.
More than scoring though the Cajuns saw greatly reduced turnovers and fouls. Against the Golden Eagles the Cajuns only turned over the ball over seven times while forcing 19 turnovers themselves including 17 steals.
Brandon Hardy and Michael Thomas both contributed to this turnover margin with Hardy recording 5 steals and Thomas grabbing 6.
The team also pulled back on fouling, only pulling 15 fouls which only led to nine points scored by the Golden Eagles.
The Cajuns did not let their free throw opportunities go to waste either as the team shot 11–15.
The Cajuns managed to avoid skidding into Pensacola for the Sun Belt Tournament, picking up their win against Southern Miss ensures better momentum than entering with a six game losing streak.
If the team hopes to make a deep run in the Tournament then they need to stop the bad stretches where they can not do anything on offense.
If the team can manage to score while protecting the ball and keep fouls on the lower end then they have a good shot.
Their next game will be Thursday, March 7 at 2 p.m. where they will play the winner of the ULM–Coastal Carolina game.