NAIA Schedule and Links, Games of the Day and Five Players to Watch: January 15th

Friday, January 15th NAIA Games

Games of the Day:

Southwest @ 21 Texas A&M Texarkana 4:00pm CT Live Video

Univ of the Southwest, based in New Mexico, elected to move it’s athletic teams to Texas in order to play games. They will play every game this season on the road. This afternoon they will play in their first game of the season vs the 21st ranked Tx A&M Texarkana squad who is 5-0. Quite the unique situation for Southwest, so we will see if Derrick Hall and company is ready to go against a Texarkana squad who is primed to make some noise!

Ottawa (AZ) @ Life Pacific 5:30pm PT Live Video

It’s the first Golden State Athletic Conference game of the season, so why not make it a Game of the Day. Ottawa will take it’s “play fast” mentality to go and play Life Pacific in California. This will be the first game of the season for LPU, while OUAZ is 5-1 on the season. The keys for LPU will be to try and slow down this OUAZ transition attack. OUAZ is 8th in the NAIA in FG% and a lot of it is how they attack the rim in transition to get easy buckets.

Dalton State @ Florida College 7:00pm ET Live Video

Florida College is set to play in it’s first SSAC contest this season tonight. A team that stormed out of the gates and is now 10-3 on the season. They got to dust the rust off last night against Johnson, and faces Dalton State for the first of back to back games. Coach Teichmann has done a great job in his 1st season as Head Coach at FC, now the challenge of SSAC is upon them and it will be fun to see if Florida College can keep playing good basketball!

Five Players To Watch

If you are going to play fast than you better have a PG that can push the tempo. Kam is currently averaging 16.83ppg and 5.0apg. Kam has scored in double figures every game this season and will look to continue that streak tonight in GSAC play!

Don’t let the photo fool ya. Matt Simpson is a walking bucket. We haven’t had the chance to talk about Matt much lately, but he is definitely one to watch if you have never seen him hoop. Simpson can fill it up from all over the court!

CJ Williamson has some competition for SSAC Player of the Year honors, but the returning 2019-20 SSAC Newcomer of the year and All-American is the real deal and a big reason Faulkner is ranked 10th in the country. They hit the road today to face Brewton-Parker and you can expect a big night for Williamson on his quest to be the SSAC Player of the Year winner. An award that went to his teammate Milan Skundric last season.

Hayes sits at 6’6 240 and moves well for his size. The Bruins have won four straight and should make it five straight tonight. Hayes had a really inconsistent start to the season, but has really turned his game up over the Bruins win streak. Presentation will have a tough time slowing him down tonight.

Davontae Craven has been a good edition to this Texarkana squad. While Connor Oullette is the scorer on this team, Craven just quietly goes about his business and has been so consistent for the Eagles. He provides so size to a team that is a bit undersized and we expect another 15 and 6 night from the big fella against University of the Southwest tonight.