Delaware Blue Hens basketball earns OT win amid roster challenges

Victories are especially nice treasures during seasons in which they are rare.

When they come in games that appear to be likely wins before a big lead vanishes, they are even better keepsakes.

So it was for the Blue Hens on Feb. 7 at the Carpenter Center, where they didn’t let giving up a late 10-point lead spoil their fun in front of 2,460.

An 89-88 overtime win over Middle Tennessee State was just the Blue Hens’ third in 12 Conference USA tip-offs. Delaware is now 7-16 on the year.

But it came in the wake of a gratifying effort in a Feb. 4 home skirmish with Liberty, unbeaten in CUSA games and winner of 12 straight. The Flames did prevail 75-69 because they better mastered the last-minute details.

Delaware has had its challenges this season, largely because of its limited set of players for most of the year. The Hens had seven of their 13 scholarship players available against MTSU and three of them – Christian Bliss, Justyn Fernandez and Macon Emory – never left the floor in 45 grueling minutes.

“When you win the game, that makes it way more fun,” Bliss told Blue Hens Radio after the game.

Tenth-year Blue Hens coach Martin Ingelsby has expressed some frustration this season, without offering details, over the unwillingness of some to perhaps return sooner rather than later, if at all, from their injuries.

“It's just this new age of college athletics,” he said after the Liberty game, “guys dealing with some injuries and timing of injuries, and what the return-to-play stuff looks like.”

Unlike several years ago, that now involves players getting paid, whether they’re playing or not, and makes one wonder if sitting out a whole season and returning for the next is more financially beneficial.

“We're trying to work through and manage,” Ingelsby said. “Every situation is different.

“It's a return-to-play process. There's how the kid's feeling, how he's progressing, and then you get to a point where it's making a decision.”

That’s just one more modern-day challenge at a time when rosters, especially for mid-major programs such as Delaware, must be almost completely rebuilt each year because of the popularity of the transfer portal and the lure of more lucrative opportunities.

Delaware’s two best players from last year left with that in mind, each significantly increasing their incomes by moving to Atlantic Coast Conference schools. Sometimes, from a playing standpoint, it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t.

Ex-Hen and 2025 All-CAA pick John Camden is one of California’s leading scorers and rebounders while 2025 CAA Rookie of the Year Izaiah Pasha rarely gets off the bench at Virginia Tech.

As for this year, Ingelsby has seen encouraging improvement in his team of late, beginning with a 73-64 win over New Mexico State on Jan. 28. That came 11 days after a 97-68 home defeat against the same team.

In beating MTSU, Delaware was boosted by 55% field-goal shooting (28-for-51), 50% 3-point aim (14-for-28) and 90.5% free-throw accuracy (19-for-21).

But the Blue Hens still needed Fernandez’s go-ahead turn-around, fade-away jumper with 17 seconds left, which inched them ahead 89-88. They then got the necessary defensive stop on a day the Blue Raiders had been tough to thwart while outrebounding Delaware 33-26.

Down 77-67 with less than four minutes left, MTSU had rallied to force OT.

“A huge win for our basketball team,” Ingelsby termed it.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware shows improvement in basketball season of many frustrations