Kennedy is In The Scoreboard Business. UAB Hopes Business Keeps Booming.
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - December 23, 2025
When you’re playing in the “scoreboard business” as UAB men’s basketball head coach Andy Kennedy calls his job the bottom line is the win-loss ledger.
With that in mind, with the non-conference slate concluded and the Blazers sitting at 9 wins and four losses, Kennedy was asked how he would grade his team thus far. In this case, though, perhaps its not quite as straight forward as simply reading a scoreboard.
“I look at it like four quarters,” Kennedy said of assessing a season.
The first quarter began when the team gets together in June. For the first time, Kennedy welcomed a complete new roster of scholarship players. So it was a summer of formulating questions and seeking answers. This one was a bit tricky considering Paul Djobet didn’t make it through the summer before transferring, Daniel Rivera didn’t arrive until August and Ahmad Robinson was coming off a shoulder injury.
But Kennedy still searched for answers to particular questions.
“Did you do enough work to put yourself in position to have a successful year?” Kennedy said. “How was your work? What was your competitive stamina? What was your capacity for work? How were you? Did you show up on time?”
After collecting the answers, Kennedy made a judgement.
“I'm a hard grader,” Kennedy said. “I wouldn't give it an A because Ahmad couldn't practice and Daniel didn't get here until late. We had a little bit of roster instability until school started. But I would give it a solid B-plus.”
The second quarter was a non-conference slate that included the program’s first loss to a SWAC school when Alabama State walked away with a win, a second half collapse at Middle Tennessee and a heartbreaking home setback to Troy. It also included home wins over High Point and South Alabama, which are a combined 19-7, on back-to-back Friday night home games, wins over Southern Illinois and UTEP in the Jacksonville Classic and a road win at Drake. As of Monday morning, the Blazers were ranked 118 in the NET rankings. The only win UAB had over a team ranked higher in the NET was the victory over High Point (115th).
“We said coming in, the consensus was, if you win this game and you're 9-4, you're probably in that C-plus to B-minus range,” Kennedy said after his team finished the non-conference slate with a 72-47 win over UNC Asheville on Sunday night at Bartow Arena. If you lose it, 8-5, you're probably in that C to C-minus range. So we needed to finish the final, and I thought we did. So I would say B-minus to C-plus.”
UAB has four players averaging double figures in points with the backcourt of Chance Westry (16 ppg), Jacob Meyer (13.6 ppg) and Robinson (12.6 ppg) leading the way. Westry and Robinson combine for 7.9 assists per game and Robinson has a team-best 24 3-pointers. But the real key has been the play of the frontcourt trio of Daniel Rivera, KyeRon Lindsay-Martin and Evan Chatman, who combine for 29.7 points and 23.4 rebounds per game. Together, they’ve led the way for a UAB team that, after last weekend, was 12th in the country in rebounds per game (42.5) and 16th in rebounding margin (plus-10.3). They’ve done it mostly without the largest player on the roster. Joao Das Chagas, a 6-foot-10 junior college transfer, played in just two games and is out indefinitely after having surgery on his right wrist.
“I think we've got really tenacious guys,” Kennedy said. “I think, you know, it's unfortunate that we lost Jo early in the season because he gave us our biggest presence. Even before he had a chance to see what he could do in Division I, he goes down with a wrist injury and he's out indefinitely. But those three guys are just, I think they complement one another. We've challenged them. I thought they're guys that can help one another. And I think they take the load. So we thought coming into the season that our front court was going to be our biggest question mark, but the reality is it's probably been our most stable unit. And that's just a testament to three guys who didn't know each other until September.”
UAB has also been a team that doesn’t commit turnovers, for the most part. The Blazers are 10th in the country in turnovers per game (9.4), which is important for an offense that doesn’t always score easily. UAB is 322nd in made field goals per game (5.9) and 337th in 3-point field goal percentage (28.8). The Blazers made 53.9 percent of their two-point attempts in the first 13 games.
“We've learned a lot about ourselves,” Kennedy said. “We have to be realistic and obviously I'm not very realistic. We have to be realistic when you're bringing together a whole new collection of guys. You know, we lose Jacob Meyer, our most efficient offensive player for the better part of (the past) three games. And for this group to continue to find ways and continue to develop an identity, now it's our job, my job especially, to instill in them the discipline by which to stay to that formula.”
That works begins after a few days off for the holidays. The team gets back together the day after Christmas to prepare for the American Conference home opener against Wichita State on Dec. 31.