Monday's games
Florida A&M (5-8, 1-1) at Norfolk State (6-5, 0-2), 6 p.m.
On March 1, 2005 at the Richmond Coliseum, the Spartans upended Florida A&M 52-47 in the MEAC Tournament semifinals. Turns out that was the last major achievement for NSU, which lost the tournament final the next day and has posted win totals of 8, 6, 5, 1 and 4 in the five full seasons since. And while this year's Spartans have clearly launched a turnaround, some significant milestones still need to be achieved. Chief among them - ending a MEAC losing streak that stretched to 21 with Saturday's 52-50 loss to Bethune-Cookman. The Spartans haven't beaten the Rattlers since that 2005 game, and to do that tonight an undersized NSU must find a way to keep the MEAC's top rebounding team off the boards. We're confident NSU's conference losing streak will end soon, but we're not convinced it'll happen tonight. Florida A&M 67, Norfolk State 61
Hampton (9-5, 2-0) at Morgan State (7-6, 2-0), 6 p.m.
The addition of freshman guard Nicole Hamilton, who was added to the roster four games ago, has been a boon to a team that had gone through the first several weeks with an extremely short rotation. Although she didn't start, Hamilton logged 37 minutes in Saturday's 75-56 win at Coppin State and scored a team-high 22 points. She's also been deadly from 3-point range, draining 10 of her 18 shots from distance over her last three games. Hampton also got offensive punch from freshman Chikilra Goodman, who scored 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting in by far her most productive stint of the season. The bedrock of Hampton's game is still defense, though, so it will be interesting to see if the Hamilton and Goodman can produce at that end of the floor, too. If they can, it's all good. Hampton 74, Morgan State 58
High Point (7-8, 1-1) at Radford (5-10, 2-0), 7 p.m.
Remarkable turnaround by the Highlanders, who followed up their best offensive performance of the season against UNC Asheville with a stingy defensive effort to upend Gardner-Webb. Even when they were struggling the Highlanders had always shown the ability to turn teams over; in their two Big South wins they've also been much more efficient offensively and gotten some nice contributions from their bench. High Point has a lot of firepower, particularly from 3-point range. And Highlanders fans don't want to get too giddy too soon, as Radford started out 3-1 in the conference last year before fading badly. But at least we can now see what the Highlanders are capable of. Let's see if they can keep it up. Radford 66, High Point 62
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