Loss to The Citadel still haunts Cougars

Saturday's 72-63 loss at The Citadel still resonates with the College of Charleston.

"I would rather have zero points, zero rebounds and zero minutes than lose that game," said C of C's Jermaine Johnson. "I'd take every point and rebound back rather than have to listen to (The Citadel forward) Demetrius Nelson's mouth and hear from everybody else how we lost to The Citadel.

"I'm getting text messages from the older guys saying, 'Oh, my gosh, you lost to The Citadel.' You don't lose to them. Charleston Southern, maybe once every decade, but you don't lose to The Citadel."

But lose the Cougars did, and now Charleston (15-4, 7-2 SoCon) must forget about it and concentrate on the task ahead, which is playing at home against UNC Greensboro tonight at 7 and against Elon on Saturday at 4 p.m.

Charleston coach Bobby Cremins is philosophical about losing to the Bulldogs, a team the Cougars had beaten 13 consecutive times.

"When you look at everything, you look at the big picture," Cremins said. "When you go on the road, you're going to lose some games. So in the big picture, this was our first road loss. So if somebody told me three months ago, 'Hey, you're going to have this record, but you're going to lose at The Citadel,' I'd have said, 'Give it to me. I'll take it.' So our record is still good.

"But now things change a little bit with The Citadel's success. They're in the same division and the top two teams in each division get a bye for the conference tournament. We know Davidson is in our division, so we're going to give them their bye. The second bye is up for grabs."

That means the Cougars need to take care of business against two teams they have already beaten on the road.

Charleston beat UNC Greensboro, 77-62, on Dec. 6. The Spartans (3-15, 2-7 SoCon) enter tonight's game on a three-game losing streak.

"Greensboro and Elon are dangerous teams," Cremins said. "Elon goes up to Chattanooga and beats Chattanooga. Greensboro goes up to Appalachian State and beats Appalachian. There are absolutely no easy games. We've got to be ourselves and get back to playing good basketball."

Johnson says the focus in practice has been on defense.

"We had a very hard practice (on Monday) and we all hustled and we played defense like we've never played defense before," he said. "We'll be ready to play Thursday."