LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In its first season in Division I, the Bellarmine University men's basketball team enters the final game of the regular season with the opportunity to capture an outright ASUN Conference title.
The Knights' opponent, Liberty, has the exact same championship aspirations.
On Saturday in Freedom Hall, Bellarmine (13-5, 10-2 ASUN) and Liberty (19-5, 10-2) will clash in a winner-take-all contest that will decide the ASUN regular-season champion. Tip-off for the high-stakes affair is set for noon (ET). As befitting of a contest where so much is on the line, the game will be nationally televised on ESPNU.
Bellarmine will be looking to prevent Liberty from earning at least a share of a third straight ASUN regular-season title. The Flames were co-champions last season with North Florida (both 13-3) and with Lipscomb in 2018-19 (both 14-2). Liberty is ranked at No. 7 in the Collegeinsider mid-major Top 25, while the Knights are receiving votes and ostensibly rated at No. 35.
In the original ASUN schedule, Bellarmine was slated to end the regular season with two games at Liberty, but the league schedule has been fluid due to the ongoing pandemic and, recently, severe weather. Ultimately, one of the alterations shifted the Bellarmine-Liberty matchup to Louisville. As part of the re-shuffling and due to a scheduling conflict at Freedom Hall on Friday, the Saturday game will be the only game contest between Bellarmine and Liberty this weekend.
Bellarmine and Liberty have both built lengthy winning streaks, with the Knights accumulating 10 straight victories and the Flames racking up eight in a row, and the programs have seemingly been on a collision course to determine the league's top regular-season team as the sweeps in ASUN play by both squads began piling up.
Statistically, the bodies of work by Bellarmine and Liberty leading into the regular-season finale are a perfect reflection of why the Knights and Flames are meeting with a title up for grabs. Some combination of Bellarmine and Liberty are 1-2 in the ASUN in scoring offense, scoring defense, field-goal percentage, free-throw percentage, assists and fewest turnovers. Further proof of the discipline and efficiency of both teams — five of the ASUN's top 6 players in assist-to-turnover ratio hail from Bellarmine or Liberty.
The league's top 2 scoring teams rely on multiple sources for their point production. Led by junior guard
Pedro Bradshaw (15.4), the Knights have four players scoring in double figures. The Flames boast only one double-digit scorer in Darius McGhee (14.8), but three others are very close.
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