Minium: It's Not Too Late for ODU Men's Basketball to Turn a so-far Frustrating Season Around

By Harry Minium

It's no secret that this has been a difficult season for the Old Dominion basketball team and its fans.

Coach Jeff Jones came down with pneumonia in the early season, and while he was absent, his Monarchs lost three winnable games by lopsided scores in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Then came a few weeks when, because of COVID, the Monarchs practiced with as few as five players.

Lately, the Monarchs have been taking games down to the wire and somehow, someway, not finishing off well enough to win.

Saturday night in Denton, Texas, ODU lost its third game in a row and the fifth in its last seven games to North Texas, 69-56. Heading into a two-game series with Charlotte that begins tonight in the Queen City, and returns to Norfolk Saturday, the Monarchs are 7-11 and 2-3 in Conference USA.

ODU led late on most of those five losses, but simply could not make shots down the stretch they needed to make to win. Although ODU played without much energy or passion in a first half in which North Texas led by as much as 22 points, Jones spoke calmly to his players at game's end.

His message? Keep playing hard. Stay together and we will get better.

"Clearly, we're going through a rough stretch right now," he said when asked by ODU radio voice Ted Alexander what he told his team.

"I think our guys have been playing hard. We talked about working on the X's and O's. We haven't gotten it done there yet. But the bottom line, I told them, is that we've got to stick together. Everyone has to stay bought in.

"If we do that, we've got a chance of turning things around and still improving as a basketball team."

Center Kalu Ezikpe said there has been no finger-pointing and that the team remains close and unified.

"I think we have one of the most talented teams in the conference," he said. "It's not a case of us having bad players. It's a matter of us figuring out how to close out the last minutes of close games."

ODU's record would be far better now had the Monarchs indeed made more shots down the stretch.

ODU led at Rice last Thursday late in the second half but missed its last 11 shots in a 77-69 loss. ODU led UTEP at home on Jan. 15 by seven with just over a minute left, but allowed the Miners to send the game into overtime, where the Monarchs lost, 78-70.

ODU also lost late leads in losses to Richmond, College of Charleston and East Carolina.

Monday morning, when the Monarchs returned to the practice floor, Jones said "there was no moping around, no negative body language, no pouting. That's what I hoped for.

"If you're a competitor, losing sucks. As much as I love winning, I hate losing even more.

"When you're a team that's struggling, going through a hard time, there's a possibility that the players won't respond in a way that's great.

"We haven't seen that with our group. They take losing hard, but they've been able to bounce back and, most importantly, stick together."

Charlotte is 10-7 and has won five of its last seven, and played a brutal non-conference schedule that included losses to Arkansas, Davidson and Wake Forest.

The 49ers, who claimed a 76-65 exhibition victory over Georgia, are led by junior Jahmir Young, who averages 19 points, 5.6 rebounds and four assists per game.

He was an All-Conference USA choice last season and Freshman of the Year in 2019-20.

Ezikpe said the road to redemption begins this week in the two games with Charlotte.

"We can turn things around," he said Wednesday night. "And that begins tomorrow night."

ODU has benefitted greatly from the surprise play of Austin Trice, the graduate transfer from Kansas State, who is averaging 19 points and 10.2 rebounds and making 60 percent of his shots in C-USA games.

But ODU needs a player or two to step up and become an alpha male in the final minutes of close games.

Jones is doing his best to shield players from what he calls "outside noise," people venting on social media or in the media about the Monarchs.

"Block out the noise and keep working," said a Tweet earlier this week from ODU basketball's official account.

"If you look at the standings," Jones said, "we're not that far off."

He's correct. ODU is fourth in the C-USA East at 2-3 not far behind FAU (4-2), Middle Tennessee (3-2) and Charlotte (3-2). Winning the East Division is huge, because it gives you favorable seeding in the conference tournament.

"We've got to take it one practice, one game at a time," he said. "We can turn it around, but it's not going to be easy.

"We've got to work hard. But we also need to learn how to win close games.

"We need to learn how to finish."