Courtesy of FGCUAthletics.com
DUNK CITY, Fla. – On Monday afternoon, FGCU’s Demetris Morant and Brandon Goodwin were named the ASUN Player of the Week and ASUN Newcomer of the Week, respectively. On Monday night, both had stellar encore performances as Morant secured his 6th double-double of the year, Goodwin netted 29 points and the Eagles (18-6, 7-1 ASUN) ran away from North Florida (9-16, 4-4 ASUN) in the 2nd half en route to a 74-59 win at Alico Arena.
Morant (Miami, Fla./UNLV/Bishop Gorman HS) finished with 14 points, a game-best 13 rebounds and a season-high-tying four blocks, once again shooting an extremely efficient 5-6 from the floor and 4-4 from the free throw line.
But it was Goodwin (Norcross, Ga./UCF/Norcross HS) who set the tone, scoring 12 of FGCU’s first 18 points. He tallied six of the Eagles’ first eight points in the 2nd half, and by the time the evening was over he had secured a season-high point total, one shy of matching his career best set in 2014-15 while with UCF. The 6-2 guard added a season-high-tying seven rebounds and also passed out a game-high-tying four assists.
When it wasn’t Goodwin attacking the UNF zone defense from the point guard position, it was Zach Johnson (Miami, Fla./Norland HS) as the redshirt sophomore scored all 16 of his points in the 2nd half. Johnson matched Goodwin’s assist total, and wreaked havoc on the defensive end as well, tying a career high with four steals.
In a matchup of the league’s top-2 teams in the preseason poll, FGCU held just a 34-32 halftime lead. But like they did when holding just a three-point halftime lead on Saturday versus Jacksonville, the Eagles dominated the 2nd half, out-scoring the Ospreys, 40-27, and limiting one of the nation’s best scorers to just two points in the final 20 minutes.
Dallas Moore entered the game ranked 4th in the nation in scoring with 23.6 points per game, and looked poised to surpass that average yet again after tallying 15 in the 1st half. However, the Green and Blue locked in defensively in the final 20 minutes, holding the ASUN Preseason Player of the Year to just 17 points on the night.
Once again helping spearhead that defensive effort was Kevin Mickle (Brooklyn, N.Y./Broward CC/CCSU/St. Benedict’s Prep) as the redshirt junior played a career-high 30 minutes off the bench. The 6-7 forward finished with four points and five rebounds, but it was his stellar defense again which held UNF to fewer than 70 points in an ASUN game for the first time all year.
“Brandon kept us in the game from an offensive standpoint in the 1st half, and then Zach had a lot of downhill drives which he scored on in the 2nd half,” stated FGCU head coach Joe Dooley. “I thought Kevin once again gave us some great minutes, in particularly on the defensive end. I was a little bit disappointed in our rebounding, but hopefully we can clean that up like we have our defense.”
That defense has stepped up drastically the last three days. After holding just one Division-I opponent under 60 points all year until Saturday versus Jacksonville, FGCU has now held consecutive foes to 56 and 59 points. Both JU and UNF were averaging better than 80 points per game in ASUN action entering their contests with the Eagles.
FGCU limited the Ospreys to just 37.5-percent shooting from the floor (24-64), and just 29.6 percent from 3-point range (8-27). The Eagles – who rank 4th in the nation in field goal percentage at better than 51 percent – struggled to just a 40.7-percent clip (11-27) in the 1st half, but shot 52 percent (14-27) in the 2nd half to finish at 46.3 percent (25-54) for the game.
With the game tied at 46-46 with 12 minutes remaining, the Eagles went on an 8-0 run – started by a Johnson theft and dunk and capped by a pair of Johnson free throws – to open up a 54-46 lead. UNF crept back to 54-50 with just over 8 minutes remaining, but a 9-0 FGCU run in less than 2 minutes thwarted any comeback attempt as the Eagles went up double figures for good.
FGCU has posted three single-digit turnover games this year against D-I competition, and two have come against UNF. On Wednesday at UNF, the Eagles committed a season-low eight giveaways en route to a 21-11 edge in points off turnovers and an 86-82 victory, and on Monday had just nine giveaways and finished with an 18-4 edge in points off turnovers.
Chris Davenport led the Ospreys with 20 points and a team-high-tying eight rebounds off the bench. In addition to Moore’s 17 points, Romelo Banks netted 10 to finish as the only other double-figure scorer for UNF, which lost its third in a row.
The Eagles, meanwhile, won their fourth in a row and 11th in the last 12 tries, with the lone loss in that time being a buzzer-beating putback by USC Upstate. FGCU remains alone in 1st place in the ASUN at 7-1, one game clear of 2nd-place Lipscomb. The Bisons are 6-2 in the league, one game ahead of USC Upstate (5-3), and the Eagles have already defeated Lipscomb on the road this year.
FGCU will look to keep its momentum going when it heads back on the road to face Jacksonville (15-10, 3-5 ASUN) on Saturday at 7 p.m. The Eagles defeated the Dolphins at Alico on Saturday, 78-56, thanks in large part to a dominant 58-14 edge in points in the paint and a 50-26 advantage on the glass.
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