Roll Kerns: Eastern Kentucky basketball wins first regular-season championship in 45 years
For the first time in more than four decades, the Eastern Kentucky men’s basketball team has won a regular-season conference championship.
With a Feb. 24 home win over Central Arkansas, the Colonels claimed at least a share of the 2023-24 ASUN’s regular-season title.
That became an outright ASUN regular season championship Friday night when Stetson, the only team that could share the conference crown with EKU, lost its regular season finale.
The outright ASUN title gives EKU home-court advantage throughout the ASUN Tournament, which is played at campus sites.
EKU is 17-13 overall and went 12-4 in ASUN games this season.
The 1978-79 Colonels squad won the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season title and lost in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament to Tennessee. EKU joined the ASUN ahead of the 2021-22 season and previously finished in a tie for seventh and third in the regular-season standings.
The Colonels’ march to an ASUN Conference regular-season championship this season is even more impressive given how the season started for head coach A.W. Hamilton’s team: EKU (current KenPom No. 187) was 4-9 in nonconference games and lost home games to UT Martin (current KenPom No. 220) and Prairie View A&M (current KenPom No. 331).
“I feel like us having a rough nonconference, I feel like that was kind of good for us,” fifth-year guard Collin Cooper told the Herald-Leader earlier this year. “It helped us get the chip on our shoulder that we needed, and it’s showing.”
Things changed in a big way for the Colonels once ASUN play began. Eastern Kentucky won its first seven league games, and it has led the conference standings the whole way. This marked the first time since the 1959-60 season (and just the third time in school history) that EKU began conference play with a 7-0 record.
Despite the rocky road that was nonconference play, EKU’s success in the ASUN this season reflected the preseason expectations that were in place in Richmond.
EKU was the consensus favorite to win the league this season, and also to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.
The Colonels returned four starters and 11 players in total (which equated to 84% of last season’s scoring) from last season’s 23-win team that reached the championship game of the College Basketball Invitational.
Hamilton — who is now in his sixth season as EKU’s head coach — was also the offseason recipient of a reworked contract that made him the highest-paid coach at the school.
Plenty of stellar on-court performances have guided EKU to this ASUN title.
Fifth-year big man Isaiah Cozart, undersized for his position at 6-foot-7, has per-game averages of 15.6 points and 9.9 rebounds.
Cozart, a former Madison Central standout who earlier this season recorded the first triple-double in EKU program history, now leads the NCAA in total blocks with 109 and blocks per game with 3.89.
Cozart owns the EKU all-time and single-season blocks records despite having played less than two full seasons for the Colonels.
“I knew I had to get more confidence and be more demanding in the post,” Cozart previously told the Herald-Leader. “And especially just be more of a leader on the court.”
A Richmond native who spent the first three years of his college career at Western Kentucky, Cozart is also top-five in the nation in offensive rebounds per game with an average of four per contest.
EKU fifth-year forward Michael Moreno, whose younger brother, Malachi, is a star basketball recruit at Great Crossing High School, has made 66 3-pointers this season and broke the program record for career 3s made in December.
Sophomore guard Leland Walker entered this weekend as a top-10 scorer in the ASUN (15.4 points per game) and is a top-5 free-throw shooter in the league (83.2%). Walker also boasts a stellar assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.7, just ahead of sophomore teammate Tayshawn Comer (1.6).
EKU can play its way into NCAA Tournament
Of course, just winning the ASUN Conference regular-season championship isn’t enough for the Colonels to secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament. (EKU last made the Big Dance in 2014.)
EKU will have to win the ASUN Tournament, held on campus sites from March 4-10, in order to book a spot in March Madness.
The good news for EKU?
The higher seed hosts games throughout the ASUN Tournament. With the outright league championship, EKU has earned the No. 1 seed for the ASUN Tournament, and the Colonels would host all of their games in Richmond.
EKU’s home record is impressive: The Colonels are 13-3 at Baptist Health Arena in Richmond this season, and they have gone 67-20 at home since Hamilton became the head coach.
EKU will open play in the ASUN Tournament in the quarterfinals on Tuesday night in Richmond. EKU will face either No. 9 seed Kennesaw State or No. 10 seed Jacksonville.
“It’s an unbelievable home court advantage,” Hamilton told the Herald-Leader earlier this month. “These guys have been lights out at home the last two years. Last year, we led the league in attendance for the first time in school history. This year we’re leading the league in attendance. ... They are Richmond’s team.”
According to BracketMatrix, should EKU win the ASUN Tournament, the Colonels project as a No. 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which puts them squarely in contention to play in a First Four game in Dayton, Ohio.
This story was originally published February 24, 2024 at 3:03 PM.
