Courtesy of FGCUAthletics.com
ALBANY, N.Y. – The FGCU men’s basketball team (2-0) used a big 2nd half to run away from Siena (0-2) Monday night at the Times Union Center as the Eagles stormed to a dominant 86-53 win, claiming their 10th-straight road victory.
The 10-consecutive triumphs away from home extends what is the 2nd-longest road winning streak in the nation, behind only an 11-game run by 2017 national runner-up Gonzaga.
Brandon Goodwin and Christian Terrell led all scorers with 16 points each, spearheading an FGCU attack which had four players in double figures and Ricky Doyle (Cape Coral, Fla./Michigan/Bishop Verot HS) just miss a double-double by a single rebound with nine points and a career- and game-best 11 rebounds. Dinero Mercurius came off the bench to net 14 points, while Zach Johnson (Miami, Fla./Norland HS) added 13 points.
The Eagles – who led the nation in points in the paint per game a season ago at 41.3 – have started off 2017-18 right where they left off as they blitzed Siena in the paint, 50-16. Just two days prior they tallied 48 points in the paint as part of a 98-87 win over defending Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion Illinois State in the season opener.
FGCU also finished the night with a 48-33 edge in rebounding, and a 17-6 advantage off fastbreak points as head coach Joe Dooley used every available player.
“We had a number of guys play a lot of minutes on Saturday, so we tried to be pretty conservative tonight and sub earlier and more often,” said Dooley, who claimed his 150th career win as a head coach. “Ricky got us off to a good start – and I didn’t necessarily think we played great early – but we were able to make a couple runs in the 1st half to create some separation. Then in the 2nd half we got off to a sluggish start, but we kept getting stops defensively and were able to get out and run to open the game up.”
The Eagles shot 51.6 percent (33-64) from the floor for the game while limiting Siena to just 30.2 percent (19-63), including only a 3-15 clip from 3-point range.
Facing a 2-3 zone, the Eagles wasted little time in shooting over that defense and attacking with their patented interior presence. An Antravious Simmons layup at the 17:52 mark of the 1st half put the FGCU in front, 6-5, and the Green and Blue never trailed after that.
The opening-half lead ballooned to 14 late in the stanza before the Eagles settled for 40-27 lead at the intermission. Leading the offensive charge in the opening 20 minutes was Terrell (Jacksonville, Fla./Providence HS), who made all five of his field goal attempts and both efforts from 3-point range to tally 12 points in his 13 minutes of 1st-half action.
After a slow, sloppy start to begin the 2nd half for FGCU, the veteran and talented team regrouped. Siena trimmed its deficit to just eight, 43-35, at the 14:22 mark, but the Eagles responded with an 8-0 run, keyed by an important baseline 3-pointer from Mercurius (Orlando, Fla./Daytona State/UTRGV/USF/Faith Baptist Christian HS) – who now has six 3s through his first two games as an Eagle.
The two sides – who met last year in Fort Myers as part of a 73-69 FGCU win – traded buckets the next few possessions before the Eagles marched the Saints out of their own building on their home-opening night.
With the score 58-40 at the 9:44 mark, FGCU went on an extended 24-8 run over the next seven minutes to open up a 34-point lead with a few minutes remaining before the largest margin of 35 occurred in the closing seconds following a jumper from walk-on Dolan Mahoney (Bradenton, Fla./IMG Academy).
Simmons (Miami, Fla./VCU/South Miami HS) started and scored seven points while grabbing eight rebounds. Goodwin (Norcross, Ga./UCF/Norcross HS) added a game-best four assists and a pair of steals, while Terrell contributed five rebounds.
Now in his 9th season as a head coach – 5th with FGCU – Dooley is 150-98 overall and 93-46 with the Eagles.
Siena – which opened its season Friday on the road by taking Colonial Athletic Association preseason favorite College of Charleston to overtime before falling by eight – was led offensively by Khalil Richard with 12 points off the bench to represent the lone double-figure scorer for the Saints, who were held to just a 25.8-percent rate (8-31) from the floor in the 2nd half.
FGCU returns to campus before heading back on the road later this week for a matchup at Bowling Green on Saturday, Nov. 18, at 6 p.m. The Falcons are 1-1 on the year after opening the season with a 78-69 win at Drexel before falling at home on Monday night to South Dakota, 88-79.
NOTEWORTHY: True freshmen Brian Thomas (Kennesaw, Ga./Kell HS) and Darnell Rogers (Baltimore, Md./Shiloh HS/Believe Prep/Indian Land HS) made their collegiate debuts in the 1st half, with Thomas scoring his first points in the 2nd half … freshman walk-on Ryan McAdoo (Boca Raton, Fla./St. Andrews HS) also made his first appearance.
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