Courtesy of FGCUAthletics.com
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The FGCU men’s basketball team (19-6, 8-1 ASUN) let a 12-point halftime lead slip away, but the resilient Eagles locked in defensively and Brandon Goodwin again took over down the stretch as FGCU claimed an impressive 67-57 road win over Jacksonville (15-11, 3-6 ASUN) Saturday night.
Goodwin (Norcross, Ga./UCF/Norcross HS) recorded his second double-double of the season with a game-high 24 points and game-best 10 rebounds as the 6-2 point guard played all 20 minutes in the 2nd half, scoring 13 of his points and securing six of his rebounds. Goodwin also passed out a team-best four assists.
Marc-Eddy Norelia (Orlando, Fla./Tulane/Olympia HS) came off the bench to score an important 12 points on 3-4 from the floor and a perfect 6-6 from the free-throw line while also grabbing seven rebounds. Zach Johnson (Miami, Fla./Norland HS) rounded out a trio of FGCU double-figure scorers with 11 points.
FGCU held a 40-28 halftime lead after using a 14-1 run midway through the stanza to open up a double-figure advantage. However, Jacksonville stormed out of the locker room and began the 2nd half on an extended 19-3 run to open up a 47-43 edge at the 12-minute mark.
A pair of FGCU buckets evened the score at 47-47, but the Dolphins responded with a 3-pointer to go back up 50-47 and the two sides hit the under-12 media timeout at around the 10-minute mark. Out of that timeout, Norelia converted a layup which spearheaded a game-changing 13-0 run over the next six minutes, and the Eagles cruised to their 5th-straight win overall.
“JU pressured us to start the 2nd half, and we didn’t handle it well,” commented 4th-year FGCU head coach Joe Dooley, whose team is now 13-0 this year when leading at the half and an incredible 63-4 overall with the Eagles. “We turned the ball over a lot early in the half, they made shots and got on a roll. We were thankfully able to weather the storm, got our bearings back and played solid defense for a stretch which allowed our offense to create some separation.”
The victory was the 7th-straight road triumph for FGCU – tied for the 4th-longest streak in the nation – and kept the Eagles alone atop the ASUN standings, one game clear of Lipscomb. The Bisons (15-11, 7-2 ASUN) will travel to Alico Arena for a crucial 1st-place showdown with FGCU on Thursday at 7 p.m. The Eagles are three games ahead of every other team in the ASUN except Lipscomb – which lost at home to FGCU earlier this year – with just five regular-season games remaining.
That matchup would be a battle between a pair of teams tied for 1st place if not for FGCU’s defense, which has started to look more like the form Dooley has instilled since his first day in Southwest Florida. After holding just one Division-I opponent below 60 points all year until last Saturday, FGCU has now held each of its last three opponents (Jacksonville, twice; North Florida, once) under 60 points – roughly 20 points below both teams’ season averages.
The Eagles clamped down in the 2nd half on Saturday, holding JU to just 9-27 (33.3 percent) from the floor. Included in that percentage was only a 3-13 clip from 3-point range in the final 20 minutes for a team which entered the contest with the 5th-most 3-pointers in the nation.
Helping lead that defensive charge was Jacksonville native Christian Carlyle. The freshman product of Bishop Kenny High School played 15 minutes – his most ever versus a D-I opponent – and drew a big charge in the middle of the FGCU 13-0 2nd-half run to help the Eagles extend their edge even more.
At one point, the bigger Eagles trailed in the rebound category, 28-20, but coinciding with that game-changing run with about 10 minutes left was a swift shift in those numbers as the Eagles secured 14 of the game’s final 20 rebounds to finish tied at 34-34.
Like it has done in every ASUN game this year, FGCU out-scored its opponent in the paint again, finishing with a 28-18 edge. FGCU came into the game leading the nation in that category with 43 per game, but the 28 were the fewest since it tallied 24 at La Salle on Dec. 17.
A big reason for that was due to the Eagles being fouled in the paint. Their aggressiveness paid off as the Green and Blue connected on 18 of 21 free throws (85.7 percent) compared with the Dolphins going just 9-16 (56.3 percent).
J.R. Holder led JU with 17 points, while Marcel White tallied 12 points to finish as the only double-figure scorers. FGCU held JU to season lows in points (56), field goals made (18) and field goal percentage (32.7) last Saturday, and nearly bettered those a week later by limiting the Dolphins to 57 points, 20 made field goals and 37-percent shooting.
After shooting 55.2 percent (16-29) from the floor in the 1st half, the Eagles – who have the 3rd-best field-goal percentage in the country at 51.4 – connected at just a 28.6-percent clip (6-21) in the 2nd half en route to shooting 44 percent (22-50) for the night. FGCU is now 18-1 this year when shooting a better percentage than their opponent from the floor, and 10-0 when holding opponents under 40 percent.
The win was the first for Dooley and any FGCU player at Jacksonville as the Eagles had lost their previous three contests on the road to the Dolphins. The Eagles now have three separate 5+ game winning streaks in a single season for the first time in program history.
The Eagles move to 8-3 on the road this year – tied with the inaugural 2002-03 team for the most road wins in a single season in program history – and are a perfect 5-0 away from The Nest in ASUN action. The Eagles have never won more than five road ASUN games in a single season, but have two such contests left this year.
That season – which is now just one victory shy of being the 5th-straight 20-win campaign for FGCU – will continue on Thursday. The aforementioned contest with Lipscomb will commence a weekend homestand which will conclude with a Homecoming matchup against Kennesaw State (11-14, 5-4) on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m.
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