TROY – The roles have been reversed for Troy and Western Kentucky since the two teams met earlier this season.
On Jan. 7, Tim Owens scored a bucket in the final seconds to give the Trojans a 67-65 win at the Hilltoppers’ home arena. Since then, Troy is just 1-6, while WKU is 3-4 under interim head coach Ray Harper.
Troy (7-15, 2-9 Sun Belt) hosts WKU (8-16, 4-7) at 1 p.m. today.
“We don’t have the real confidence that we had back then,” Troy head coach Don Maestri said. “I let the guys take Tuesday and Wednesday off this week to forget about basketball a little bit. Maybe that’ll help us out mentally. It’s been a mental thing as much as anything else.”
Troy has normally gotten good production from a trio of players – point guard Will Weathers, guard Emil Jones and forward Justin Wright. In last Saturday’s 83-78 loss to UL-Lafayette, Weathers scored 22, Wright scored a career-high 21, and Jones scored 19 with 13 rebounds.
Beyond that, Troy hasn’t gotten much consistency, and riding who’s hot isn’t the answer.
“We can’t ride who’s hot when nobody’s getting hot,” Maestri said. “We’ve got a few guys and we’re hoping one more guy can get in and take charge of the position (at the shooting guard) and run with it, but nobody has.”
Senior Steven Cunningham starts along with the trio and center Tim Owens. His game relies more on driving to the basket, where bench guards R.J. Scott, Alan Jones and Daronte Clark are best at spot-up shooting.
All three have gotten hot at one time or another this year, but neither of the three are shooting better than 36.7 percent.
“It’s hard to assess where we want to go,” Maestri said. “It’s back to guesswork. It creates a little frustration for everyone in knowing their roles, but we’re hoping that someone will step out in front and that hasn’t happened.”
Weathers leads Troy in scoring at 11.7 points per game, and Wright is scoring 11.3 points per game. Weathers also leads the Sun Belt and ranks 24 th in the country with 5.9 assists per game.
Troy has never swept Western Kentucky in the two-game regular season series since moving to the Sun Belt, but the Trojans had never won at WKU until this season.
Freshman Derrick Gordon leads WKU in scoring at 11.5 ppg. George Fant, another freshman, is second at 9.2 ppg. The Hilltoppers are shooting a league-worst 38.4 percent from the field and 30.2 percent from 3-point land.
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