Before every Coppin State practice this season, a band of shooters from one of the most prolific 3-point shooting teams in Division I gathers around a rim inside the Physical Education Complex for a little friendly competition.
The goal is simple, guard Tony Gallo explains, and the battles typically taut. Knock down 10 shots from beyond the arc before anyone else does, and you win. Lately, Gallo's won a lot.
Or has he?
"He said he was in the lead?" forward Logan Wiens exclaimed in mock disbelief Monday. "I don't know about that one."
On a team that has 3-pointers account for more than 40 percent of its scoring, perhaps these kinds of grudges are only natural. The Eagles' 9.9 3-pointers per game trail only Florida (10.2 per game) nationally, and three players shoot 40 percent or better from beyond the arc.
Gallo, who ranks second in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference in made 3-pointers, isn't even one of them.
"The fact of being up there in 3-point shots made doesn't surprise me," coach Fang Mitchell said. "Just the amount surprises me."
Coppin State (13-13, 8-5 MEAC), which hosts Morgan State (6-18, 3-9 MEAC) on Wednesday night and is two weeks from the start of the conference tournament, has already ensured at least one revision to the program's record books. In 26 games this season, the Eagles have 258 3-pointers, three more than the team record from its 30-game campaign of 1993-94.
If the long-range shooting marks of Wiens (43.3 percent) and Michael Harper (44.7 percent) don't slack too far, both should also settle into their own top-10 spots in program history.
"It means a lot to us," Wiens said of the 3-pointer. "We pretty much live and die by it."
And therein lies the problem for Mitchell and the defense-averse Eagles.
On any given night, the conference's top scoring offense can shoot as it did in late January against North Carolina A&T, hitting 15 3-pointers and scoring 92 points. The conference's second-worst defense can also make that not enough. The Eagles surrendered 15 3-pointers in that game, and "when it was all said and done," Mitchell said, "it came down to making a stop, and we didn't make the stop" in a 93-92 overtime loss.
"We have the capability to play really good defense, and we show it at times when you lock people down for seven, eight, nine possessions in a row," said Gallo, who leads the team in scoring with 16.8 points per game. "But then we give up seven, eight, nine points in a row."
Mitchell said this is the best-shooting group he's assembled in his 33 years in Baltimore, but he won't have it for much longer. Then again, has hasn't had it very long to begin with, either. Gallo, Wiens, Harper and forward Akeem Ellis are all seniors, but only Harper has worn a Coppin State uniform for more than two seasons. Gallo and Ellis joined the Eagles after two years in junior college, while Wiens, a 26-year-old former minor league first baseman, is finishing up his one and only season in Division I.
Scary as it sounds, the foursome responsible for 70.4 percent of Coppin State's scoring at one point had a fifth downtown devotee. But after Osman Olol, the team's projected starting center, fractured his upper arm in the team's first preseason scrimmage against Navy, the Eagles had to go back to the drawing board.
At least to some degree.
"To tell you the truth, with Olol, we'd probably shoot a few more 3s because he actually shoots 3-pointers," Wiens said of his 6-foot-9, 210-pound teammate with a laugh. "He's a pretty good shooter."
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An earlier version of this article referred to the Coppin State Eagles as the Hawks. The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.