HUNTSVILLE | For the fourth time in the five years that campus sites have hosted quarterfinal contests, The University of Alabama in Huntsville men's basketball team will enjoy home-court advantage as the No. 3 seed Chargers host sixth-seeded West Georgia in the opening round of the 2019 Gulf South Conference Men's Basketball Championship presented by VisitSpaceCoast.com on Tuesday night at Kelly Court at Spragins Hall.
 
Tip-off is slated for 7:30 p.m.
 
UAH went 22-6 during the regular season, while UWG visits the Rocket City after going 17-11.
 
Behind a significant youth movement, the Chargers far exceeded the expectations set forth in the preseason poll of the league's head coaches in which the team was picked to finish seventh.
 
Instead, with three sophomores leading the team in scoring, UAH went on to finish the conference season at 15-5, just one game off the pace set by the two teams atop the standings.
 
Sam Orf paces the Chargers offensively, scoring 14.4 per game thanks to a field goal percentage of 51.6 percent, and he has been terrific from beyond the arc, connecting on 45.1 percent of his attempts to average 2.2 made treys per game. Scoring 13.3 points per game to go along with a rebounding mark of 8.2 per contest which ranks third in the GSC is JJ Kaplan, and Seth Swalve rounds out UAH's trio of double-figure scorers with 12.0 per game to go along with a team-high 100 assists on the year.
 
Those three are all shooting better than 50 percent, allowing the Chargers to be tops in the conference with a team shooting percentage of 50.1 percent, and the squad has also been strong defensively this season, ranking fourth in the conference with the opponents shooting 43.3 percent and 17th in the nation with an opposing scoring average of 65.8 points per game.
 
UAH will need a good defensive effort on Tuesday night, especially in regards to UWG's Marquill Smith who leads the GSC with 27.6 points per contest. 
 
In the two meetings between the two teams in the regular season, Smith scored 34 in an 84-78 West Georgia win in Huntsville on Nov. 29, and he went for 32 in UAH's 83-72 victory in Carrollton last Thursday. A key difference in the two games, however, was UAH limiting the Wolves to a 48.4 percent mark from the floor last week compared to a 62.5 field goal percentage in the earlier setback.
 
This will mark the third time the two programs have met in the GSC tournament with the previous meeting coming in 2016 when UWG defeated the Chargers in the championship game.
 
UAH is 19-14 all-time in the conference postseason, making six championship game appearances and winning three titles including most recently in 2017.
 
The winner of Tuesday's contest will advance to the conference semifinals which are set for Saturday in Homewood, Alabama, on the campus of Samford University.