Blazers look for confidence in battle with Florida foes
The non-conference schedule is winding down for the UAB men's basketball team and, in some ways, the Blazers are still looking for some extra confidence.
"You take some teams that play a really poor schedule and they're winning a bunch of games and they get confidence," said UAB head coach Mike Davis.
"They get really confident. We just have to go back and look at our schedule. It was a booger bear, a freaking booger bear." It doesn't get any easier this week for the Blazers. In fact, at the end of the week, the Blazers face their toughest test of the season with a game against defending national champion Florida in the Orange Bowl Classic in Miami.
But before UAB gets to the Gators, it has to face Big East Conference member South Florida tonight at 7 o'clock at Bartow Arena.
The Bulls are 7-4 heading into tonight's game but have lost successive games to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UNLV and Missouri State.
Melvin Buckley, a 6-foot-7 senior averaging 17.5 points per game, leads USF. Other key players are 6-6 senior McHugh Mattis (13.9 points, 8.0 rebounds per game) and 6-foot freshman Solomon Bozeman (13.6 points per game).
The Bulls' lineup has been bolstered by the addition of 6-9, 270-pound junior Kentrell Gransberry. The Baton Rouge native played two junior college seasons before signing with LSU. He spent a semester at LSU before transferring to USF and just became eligible to play for the Bulls. He's averaging 13.5 points and 11.8 rebounds in the four games since becoming eligible and already has more rebounds than all but two players on the USF roster.
It will be a tough challenge physically for UAB big men Frank Holmes and Jeremy Mayfield, who haven't been as productive as Davis hoped.
"We need to get better play from our inside guys," Davis said.
Holmes had a career-high 22 points and a season-high 11 rebounds against a physical Minnesota team on Dec.5. In the four games since then, the 6-9, 210-pound junior has nine points and 15 rebounds. He played just five minutes in a loss to Old Dominion and 14 minutes on Saturday in a lopsided win over Winston-Salem State.
Mayfield replaced Holmes in the starting lineup the past two games - the first two starts of his career - but managed just 11 points and 11 rebounds in the two games. The 6-10, 240-pound freshman is averaging 4.3 points and 4.6 rebounds per game thus far and has reached a season-high 10 points three times.
