Featured Image: Justin Nedrow

After last night’s disappointing performance, the Stetson Hatters came to play in both team’s regular-season finale as UNF struggled to find their groove and couldn’t string together scoring runs. There was no cap as the final buzzer rang and an 85-68 Stetson win put a stamp on the regular season.

Coming into today’s game, there was not much drama regarding conference standings or ASUN tournament berth. UNF had the conference number four seed locked up with the win yesterday and Stetson is sitting at the seven seed in the conference with little room to improve. 

The Hatters did not have to worry about securing a conference berth with all ASUN teams making the tournament this year due to COVID scheduling.

With today’s game being a tune-up game for both squads, the teams still treated it as a standard conference game as the rivalry between the two foes was still on the table. UNF owned an eight-game win streak against the Hatters but couldn’t extend it to nine. While Stetson played remarkably well, UNF will look past this game focused on the conference tournament.

For the Hatters, Christiaan Jones put up big numbers once again to record a game-high 20 points. Unlike yesterday’s game, Jones got some help from his teammates and his bench as five Hatters reached double digits in points.

Stetson also used adequate pressure to limit the Ospreys to just 24 made field goals. 

Unfortunately for UNF, this game was not what they were looking for to end the season. One useful takeaway from this series and today’s game is that Josh Berenbaum is finding his rhythm down the stretch. His 15 points led the team while coming off the bench, and his 30 points in the series have been beneficial.

This was about the only useful takeaway as low points will overshadow Berenbaum’s career-high-tying game. Carter Hendricksen struggled from the field, only recording 4 points on 1-7 shooting. His average of 12 points per game will most likely need to be met or exceeded as the Ospreys head into the ASUN tourney.

While Jose Placer had another double-digit game with 11 points, that will almost certainly need to increase as well. While key players on the Ospreys lineup like Josh Endicott and Dorian James did not suit up today, the Ospreys do have time to work on their weaknesses before the ASUN tournament.

Speaking of the ASUN tournament, the tournament will start on Thursday, March 4th, with UNF remaining as the four seed in the conference. They will face the North Alabama Lions at 2 p.m. at JU’s Swisher gym. The Hatters will know their schedule later today but will likely face the Lipscomb Bisons on the same day.

The Ospreys finish up the season top four in the conference for the 8th straight year and will need to beat a team that they split the series earlier this year. A preview of that matchup will be up early this week. Tune into UNF Spinnaker for more UNF Sporting coverage.

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