Stetson pushes toward end of regular season with legit ASUN Conference title hopes

DELAND — Following Thursday’s loss to Queens, Donnie Jones mentioned “the big pink elephant in the room.”

But with the Stetson Hatters right now, there are actually two.

First, there’s the one Jones alluded to.

Senior Josh Smith suffered a season-ending injury in a victory over Florida Gulf Coast last weekend and missed his first game against Queens. Earlier this month, the starting forward claimed the ASUN Player of the Week award while Stetson was playing its best basketball of the league schedule.

“We just have to make some adjustments,” said Jones, in his fifth season as head coach. “I think this team is very capable of doing a lot of good things. Obviously, we won four in a row coming into today and had been playing very well. We can’t let one setback continue to snowball at an important time.”

Yes. “Important time” — that’s the second elephant that has stood over the entire 2023-24 season.

The ASUN Tournament tips off March 4, and the Hatters (18-11, 10-4) have a real chance. They entered Thursday as the two seed, one game back of Eastern Kentucky who they already knocked off 87-79 on Feb. 10. Stetson owns the tiebreaker.

But after the 83-75 defeat at the hands of Queens, the Hatters plopped to two back. They remain there with two regular-season contests to go after handling Kennesaw State 84-72 Saturday.

Never has the program made the NCAA Tournament. Its first ASUN championship would guarantee a spot, and obviously gaining a better seed would help toward that.

“It’s in everybody’s back of the head,” senior guard Stephan Swenson said. “But our whole entire focus has been, the most important game is the next one. It’s always been like, ‘Today’s game is probably the most important game of the year.’ So we just focus on each game and let the results take care of it.”

Swenson stood out on an otherwise disappointing night Thursday. He scored a career-high 29 points and reached 1,000 points for his career.

STETSON BASEBALL: 5 players to watch this season for ASUN title hopeful Hatters

Stetson recorded more history Saturday when it picked up win No. 18. The Hatters had not hit that mark since 1987, a year they went to the conference title game and lost.

They’ve been to two finals since then — 1994 and 2016 — and dropped both.

Last season, they won 17 games before being upset as the fourth seed by No. 5 Lipscomb in the ASUN quarterfinals. They fell just short of their first Division I postseason victory in the CBI in mid-March.

That game, an overtime loss to Milwaukee, featured a Smith knee injury that kept him off the court until January. So, Stetson has experience competing without him.

But since he returned in a Jan. 4 win over North Florida, he played 13 games (11 starts) with 9 points and 6.2 rebounds. Those stats ranked fourth and second on the squad.

He tallied a 24-point, 11-rebound double-double in the Hatters’ win over league leader Eastern Kentucky.

“We’re going to have to mix up lineups,” Swenson said. “Sometimes, we’re a little shorter with Cyncier Harrison, Tristan Gross or have Treyton Thompson replace Josh and play the four. We have a bunch of lineups we’ve already experienced through the whole non-conference, where we had big games and big wins.

“It’s going to be a whole, entire adjustment, but just missing Josh’s toughness and rebounding does affect us a lot. So it’s just how to bring all the guys to chip in little by little.”

B-CU BASEBALL: 5 players aiming to lead Wildcats, off to 3-1 start, to SWAC title

Stetson still has four scorers averaging more than 11 points per game. Junior Jalen Blackmon and Swenson lead with 20.6 and 13.1.

Junior center Aubin Gateretse is putting up 11.2 points and 7.6 boards a night. And like Swenson said, the Hatters can sub in Thompson, a Minnesota transfer, or go small with additional guards Harrison or Gross.

They experimented with all of that throughout November and December and collected wins over the likes of UCF, Milwaukee and Central Michigan.

Now, it’s about beating the likes of Jacksonville and North Florida.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Stetson adjusting to Josh Smith injury before ASUN basketball tourney