Donald Copeland isn’t eating or sleeping much these days.
Despite Wagner’s recent two-game winning streak, which has included dominant home victories over Saint Francis and Stonehill, Copeland and his coaches are busy racking their brains with how to manage a team in an unprecendented situation.
Due to a rash of injuries that’s resulted in six of Wagner’s 13 scholarship players being out for a prolonged period of time, Copeland has rode with seven dressed players over the past four games. Remarkably, Wagner is 3-1 and playing some of its best basketball of the season. The Seahawks have allowed just 0.94 points per possession, forced oppoents to shoot 39% from the field and has attempted 26 more free throws over that stretch.
“I haven’t seen this before. I haven’t seen this as a player, I don’t think there’s a script to it,” Copeland said of leading his severely shortened rotation. “I’m still learning as I go.”
With a roster already significantly compromised with long-term injuries to veterans Rahmir Moore (wrist), Zaire Williams (knee) and Rob Taylor (shoulder), things improbably took an even worse turn right after Christmas. Copeland was hoping to get his players’ blood pumping after the Christmas holiday with live 3 on 3 ahead of their non-conference finale at Manhattan. That was when Di’Andre Howell-South, fresh off an encouraging 16-point, 3-assist performance versus Gwynedd Mercy, hurt his knee.
Howell-South, along with a few other Seahawks, won’t return to the hardwood this season.
The relentless injury hardship has continually forced Copeland to get creative with how he keeps his healthy guys fresh and fit during practice. It’s gotten to the point where Wagner’s assistant coaches, and even Copeland himself, are jumping into practice to work on certain things.
“We have dummy offense for a lot of things. I try to move them as hard as I can, I still get after them a little bit…” he says. “It’s going to be a fluid thing, I have to play it by feel. The last thing I want is anybody getting hurt in practice to be honest with you.”
And then there’s dealing with the precariously thin rotation during games. Keyontae Lewis and Melvin Council, each playing a lionshare of minutes for obvious reasons, were compromised late in the second half of the LIU game due to cramping. Tyje Kelton rolled his ankle earlier in that contest and had to limp around to the bitter end.
Then there was the Saint Francis pregame where Copeland got word of Julian Brown feeling nauseous and throwing up prior to the game. While Brown admirably gutted it out to score 19 points on 13 shots, Copeland ended up having both of his big men, Lewis and freshman Seck Zongo, foul out late. Wagner was literally down to its last five bodies in the final minute of the Red Flash win.
The constant churn has decentized Copeland to the point where he’s numb to the information coming to him.
For what it’s worth, the shortened rotation has galvanized the program. Over the past four games, the Seahawks have an assist on more than two thirds of their baskets and a splendid assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.8. The latter stat has been a theme for Wagner all season – they currently have the 59th best offensive turnover rate (15.5%) in college basketball with a number of players – Melvin Council, Brown and Tahron Allen – doing well to protect the ball.
“That’s our brand of basketball, you know,” Copeland said after Stonehill’s win when asked about the elite assist numbers. “We’ve always preached sharing the ball and we’re at our best when we’re doing that. Our shooting numbers are a reflection of that…”
The Seahawk Seven model has forced players to step up. Brown, now a sophomore coming off a freshman tilt where he played just 20% of the team’s minutes, has made ten 3s, dished out 15 assists and committed just two turnovers in Wagner’s three conference games.
“He has a chip on his shoulder that he has something to prove,” Copeland said of Brown, who’s made 37% of his catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts this season. “Him, like Javy (Ezquerra), they are playing for me as an undersized guard and I’m very demanding of it and he answers to it, man.”
Like Brown, another player originally destined for second unit work was Allen. The lefty transfer from Monmouth has not only been a revelation for Wagner in the scoring department, but he’s also added a perimeter element to his bully-ball profile. The high percentage from three – 63% to be exact – surely wasn’t expected when Copeland recruited Allen this offseason, but it’s been a much needed boon to Wagner’s offensive prospects.
“He has one of the best looking shots on my team,” Copeland said. “And all summer he’s making them in our workouts, then we go live and he’s hestitant and I’m getting on him ‘shoot it, shoot it or you’re going to come out.’”
Throw in the steadiness of Council as the transition/slashing dynamo and Ezquerra as the steady floor general and Wagner has emerged as a wounded, albeit dangerous team in the Northeast Conference.
“I have tough kids that are good kids – they’re not making excuses for themselves and we don’t allow it,” Copeland said of his players. “I’m not going to let us quit, I’m not going to just pack it in. We’re going to fight, man, we’re going to fight.”
Inside the Defensive Numbers
Because of the injuries, Wagner has played significantly more zone compared to last season. The Seahawks have spent 16.6% of their defensive possessions in some kind of zone, compared to 4.8% last season, according to Synergy. Copeland’s shift to a more hybrid defense has given the program more options to stop opponents, as evident from the numbers.
| Points per Poss Allowed | PPP Percentile Rank | eFG% Defense | |
| Man-to-Man Defense | 0.819 | 84% | 46.4% |
| Zone Defense | 0.797 | 81% | 40.7% |
In Monday’s win over Stonehill, Wagner held Stonehill to 54 points on the back of their man-to-man defense, yet the demanding Copeland wasn’t exactly waxing poetic about how the Seahawks stymied Chris Kraus’ group.
“The defense hadn’t been what it needed to be, up to my standards and still even today I’m not happy with the fact that (Stonehill) shot over 52% in the second half,” he said. “I think that can’t happen regardless if we’ve got 7, 10, whatever guys we have, that has to be better.”
With a difficult stretch of schedule ahead of Wagner – Merrimack twice, Sacred Heart and CCSU once in the next four – the shorthanded group will need its defense to keep themselves in games. It’s also possible that some players, namely Zae Blake and Churchill Bounds, could eventually find their way back into the rotation.
For now though, the Seahawk Seven is what Wagner is. And they are doing just fine at the moment.
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