The Seahawks kicked off basketball season on Nov. 8 with a 30-point win against the Barton College Bulldogs.

Barton started out aggressively, forcing a turnover on UNCW’s first possession that resulted in a transition score. That aggressiveness resulted in five team fouls in the first two minutes.

There would be a lot of fouls throughout the game, with a total of 44 being called on the floor. This can be attributed to the NCAA wanting to enforce touch fouls and emphasize that basketball is not a contact sport.

“It’s [the way games are called now] been pretty tough since we rely a lot on our pressure and defensive intensity,” said redshirt-senior Craig Ponder after the game. “It’s just something we’ll have to adjust to from game to game.”

UNCW had plenty of opportunities to pull away from Barton but the inability to convert on offense allowed the Bulldogs to hold the lead for a solid length of time. The largest of which was an 18-13 lead early in the first half.

“They took the lead in the first half,” said UNCW head coach Kevin Keatts. “That’s the great thing about it because you want to see how your team will respond. I think in the second half some of our guys started to settle in.”

Barton could not compete with UNCW in rebounding. The Seahawks finished the game with a 54-30 advantage. It was the defensive effort on the boards that balanced out UNCW’s 25 turnovers.

“Since coach [Keatts] got here that’s been his philosophy: defense, defense, defense,” said Ponder, who finished with nine points and three rebounds. “In the first half, our offense wasn’t really falling, so we relied heavily on our defense. Near the end of the first half we started to pick up the pressure and carry it over into the second half.”

Redshirt junior Chris Flemmings, led the team with 10 points in the first half while shooting four for five from the floor. Flemmings appeared in his first game as a Seahawk after sitting out last year as a result of transferring from Barton College.

UNCW led 36-28 at the half.

“They’re a tough team,” said Flemmings, after showing up big against his former team. “They always play hard, no matter what. It was fun.”

Shooting opened up for UNCW in the second half. The Seahawks started on a 16-0 run, and by the time the second media timeout came around they led 58-31. A few threes in that stretch were contributed by graduate student Dylan Sherwood, who helped spark the offense at the time.

It was the first-year impact players who would eventually shined. Flemmings’s 12 points and eight rebounds, freshman Trey Grundy’s 13 points and seven rebounds, and freshman C.J. Bryce’s 10 points and six rebounds would propel UNCW to an 81-51 win.

Regular season play begins Friday as the Seahawks take on the Milligan Buffaloes.