HARRISONBURG — When the top two teams in the Colonial Athletic Association meet tonight at the Convocation Center, a pair of sure-fire first-team all-conference players will take the floor.

Kamiah Smalls of league-leading James Madison is averaging 17.5 points per game on 49 percent shooting. Second-place Drexel’s Bailey Greenberg leads the CAA in scoring at 18.3 points per game.

But if JMU coach Sean O’Regan has his way, another of his players will join Smalls on the all-conference team despite not putting up huge offensive numbers. And it’s that player, redshirt-junior Kayla Cooper-Williams, who might be the difference as the Dukes (23-4, 15-1 CAA) look to clinch an outright regular-season CAA championship.

“Kayla Cooper-Williams is tremendous on the glass,” O’Regan said. “It’s almost a thankless job sometimes, because a lot of the time she’s kicking it back out. It’s so valuable for us. I really, really hope the league, and whoever is voting for that stuff, appreciates the value in that. I think, no doubt, she’s all-conference. I think she’s the Defensive Player of the Year. I just hope she gets her due, because she’s worked really hard for it.”

The 6-foot-2 center averages 6.3 points per game, but is easily the CAA’s top rebounder and shot blocker, pulling down 9.7 boards and swatting 2.8 shots per contest. Cooper-Williams is coming off Sunday’s hard-fought victory at Towson, in which she nearly recorded a triple-double, finishing with nine points, nine rebounds and nine blocks.

Already JMU’s career shot-block leader, Copper-Williams broke her on single-season mark against Towson, now with 74.

While the matchup of two Player of the Year candidates at guard will deservedly get quite a bit of attention, Cooper-Williams causes some matchup problems for Drexel (21-6, 13-3). In the previous meeting, back on Jan. 6, Cooper-Williams finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds as JMU came away with a 51-35 road win.

And while she blocked just one shot in that one, her simple presence in the middle may have gone a long way toward holding the Dragons to 35 points.

“Ninety-five percent of it is instinct, but since I’ve come to college, and especially this year, I’ve been taught how to think about blocking shots,” Cooper-Williams said. “I’m thinking about which shots to actually go for and which shots to fall back on. Sometimes not blocking it is just as effective because it’s always in your mind, is she coming or is she not?”

But with the end of the regular season on the horizon and her coach thinking about postseason honors, Cooper-Williams is trying to keep all that out of her mind.

“I play better when I just go out and play,” she said. “I try not to think about stuff like that because then I might overthink and that’s not good.”

Fortunately for O’Regan and the Dukes, that hasn’t happened much this season.