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Wolves Prepare to Compete in the ASUN Championship Tournament

3/2/2026 3:00:00 PM

By: Danny Talbert
CARROLLTON, Ga. - History will be made Wednesday (March 4) when No. 6 West Georgia men's basketball makes its first appearance in the ASUN Championship Tournament, facing off against the No. 11 North Florida Ospreys in the opening round at Swisher Gymnasium. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m., and the game is streaming on ESPN+.

Going head-to-head twice this season, UWG (14-16, 8-10 ASUN) and UNF (7-24, 5-13 ASUN) split the series with both teams taking wins at each other's home courts. 

Fueled by three 20-point scorers, UWG ran away with an 85-73 victory over the Ospreys in the season's first matchup. North Florida would later avenge that loss in the City of Dreams with an 81-73 win after outshooting the Pack 49 percent to 33 percent.

West Georgia will look to its leading scorer and rebounder, forward Shelton Williams-Dryden, to push the pace on Wednesday. Averaging 20.8 points and nine rebounds per game, Williams-Dryden leads the team and ranks second in the ASUN in both categories. The forward isn't just scoring at a high rate, he is doing it while shooting at a sixth-best in conference 50 percent field goal rate. Williams-Dryden dropped a team-high 27 points and 17 points in the previous two matchups vs North Florida.

Serving as the offensive spark off the bench, guard Josh Smith has paired well with Williams-Dryden as a one-two scoring punch for UWG. Currently, Smith's 16 points per game average ranks him sixth overall in the ASUN, but first for players coming off the bench. Like with Williams-Dryden, Smith's high scoring rate has been matched with a 12th-best in conference 40 percent field goal percentage. Looking at his game logs, the Chicago native has dropped 20 or more points in three of the last six games. Against UNF, Smith scored 20 in the first matchup and was held to 11 in the second. 

While UWG scores an average of 76.5 points per game to North Florida's 79.4, the Wolves' defense is what really sets the two teams apart. Anchored by a league-best 5.1 blocks per game and a second-best 36.5 rebounds per game, UWG has limited its opponents to 79.7 points, while UNF has allowed a league-most 88 points per game.

The Wolves' block average has been fueled by forwards JaVar Daniel and Kenneth Chime, with the former averaging a league-best 1.9 blocks and the latter averaging a third-best 1.6 blocks.

Looking at North Florida, the Ospreys' offense has run through senior guard Kamrin Oriol, who averages a team-high 20.5 points per game (third in ASUN) while shooting a tenth-best in conference 48 percent from the field. Along with his high scoring rate, the guard leads UNF and ranks third in the ASUN with a 4.3 assists per game average. Remarkably, his 129 assists are more than double those of the next closest Osprey. Going over his game logs, Oriol led UNF with 28 points and 22 points in the head-to-head matchups against West Georgia.

Following behind Oriol with a 14.8 points per game average is sophomore guard Kent Jackson. With 100 of his 142 made shots coming from beyond the arc, it shouldn't be a surprise that he leads the ASUN in three-pointers made per game (3.3). Not only is he leading the league in three-pointers made, he is also recording a sixth-best in ASUN 35 percent three-point percentage. Against West Georgia, Jackson scored four points and then exploded for 17 points in the two matchups. If No. 10 has the ball, be on the lookout for him to heat up from deep.

A win on Wednesday will advance the Wolves to a quarterfinal matchup against Queens, but a loss ends the season. UWG and UNF tip off from Jacksonville's arena (Swisher Gymnasium) on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Live stats and the ESPN+ links will be tagged on the team's schedule when they are made available by the ASUN.


 
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