Courtesy of FGCUAthletics.com
SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The road to the ASUN Men’s Basketball Championship once again runs through Alico Arena.
The FGCU men’s basketball team (20-8, 11-0 ASUN) became the first team in the nation to wrap up a regular-season title as the Eagles used a 2nd-half onslaught to erase a 15-point halftime deficit and power themselves to an emphatic 88-71 victory Saturday at USC Upstate (7-21, 2-9 ASUN).
The triumph secures the Green and Blue’s second-straight outright regular-season crown – third overall in the last five years – and positions FGCU as the No. 1 seed with home-court advantage throughout the ASUN Tournament – which the Eagles have claimed each of the past two years and three times in the past five campaigns.
Trailing by as much as 18 points in the 1st half, the Eagles matched their largest comeback in program history set just last month with a torrid 2nd-half pace. FGCU shot a gaudy 73 percent (24-33) from the floor and scored 59 points – its 2nd-most in any half against a Division-I opponent in program history – to extend its D-I program-best winning streak to 13 in a row, which is currently tied for the 7th-longest in the nation.
RaySean Scott Jr. led the charge off the FGCU bench with a career-high 21 points on 8-10 shooting to go along with six rebounds. He paced a quintet of Green and Blue double-figure scorers as Brandon Goodwin had 19, Zach Johnson and Christian Terrell each netted 14 and Antravious Simmons (Miami, Fla./VCU/South Miami HS) put together consecutive double-figure point performances for the first time this year with 11 and six rebounds.
USC Upstate dominated the 1st half, forging ahead by a 32-14 margin with less than six minutes to play in the opening stanza. The Spartans maintained a comfortable cushion at the half, 44-29. But FGCU – which has now won 13-straight ASUN road games and 14 league contests in a row overall – absolutely throttled the Spartans in the 2nd half.
The Eagles out-scored Upstate in the 2nd half, 59-27. They scored an absurd 56 of those points in the paint or at the free-throw line. They limited Upstate to just 26-percent shooting (9-34) after it connected at a 42-percent rate (16-38) in the 1st half.
It all added up to FGCU becoming the first school in the history of the ASUN Conference (which dates back to 1978-79) to post six-consecutive 20-win seasons. Combined with the women’s basketball team’s 23 victories, FGCU is currently the only school in the nation which has had its men’s and women’s basketball teams post six-straight 20-win campaigns.
“We had no answer early; they made a bunch of 3s – and we’re usually a good 3-point defensive team,” commented FGCU head coach Joe Dooley of Upstate’s nine 1st-half 3-pointers. “But we were able to get some stops in the 2nd half and get out in transition for some easy buckets. We mixed up our defenses a little bit and were able to get Upstate off the 3-point line in the 2nd half.”
FGCU came out of the halftime locker room and completely erased its deficit in only eight minutes. The Eagles took the lead for good on a Johnson (Miami, Fla./Norland HS) traditional three-point play at the 11:52 mark. Terrell (Jacksonville, Fla./Providence HS) followed with a steal and a three-point finish of his own on the ensuing possession to put FGCU up 56-51, and the Eagles were never threatened after that.
Mike Cunningham led all scorers with 26 points for the Spartans, who were out-scored in the paint in the 2nd half, 46-8. Deion Holmes added 16 points and eight rebounds, and Ramel Thompkins netted 13 points and collected six rebounds for Upstate, which shot just 3-18 (17 percent) from 3 in the 2nd half after its 9-20 (45 percent) performance in the 1st half.
Unanimous ASUN Preseason Player of the Year Goodwin (Norcross, Ga./UCF/Norcross HS) added team-high-tying totals of six rebounds and six assists, while Terrell matched the redshirt senior’s assist number with a season-matching performance in that category. Johnson contributed five assists and three steals as the Eagles passed out 19 helpers compared with just nine turnovers – FGCU’s third single-digit turnover performance in the last four games after just two such outings through the season’s first 23 contests.
Scott Jr. (Compton, Calif./Compton HS) eclipsed his previous career high of 15 points set in November against Denver. He went 5-6 from the free-throw line as well – the most the sophomore has made in a single game from the charity stripe.
The Eagles capitalized on almost all of Upstate’s 14 miscues as FGCU finished with a 26-8 edge in points off turnovers, a 56-20 advantage in paint points and a 37-6 cushion in bench points.
Through its first 10 ASUN games, FGCU had trailed for a total of only 29:40 out of 400 minutes, and 15:58 of that came in one game at Lipscomb (13:42 total time trailing in the nine other ASUN contests). On Saturday alone, the Eagles trailed for 28:40, but led for the final 11:08when it mattered most.
The 18-point comeback matches FGCU’s 66-48 deficit faced at Lipscomb on Jan. 18 as the program’s largest all-time. That contest also signified the only other time the Eagles have trailed at halftime all conference season.
Making the performance this year even more impressive is that FGCU still hasn’t had a single game yet this season where all 12 scholarship players have been healthy/eligible.
The regular-season crown guarantees that FGCU will be playing in the postseason for the sixth-straight season in only seven years of eligibility. While the ultimate goal remains a third-straight journey to the NCAA Tournament, FGCU secured at least a trip to the NIT by virtue of the regular-season championship.
FGCU returns home for a pair of games against Kennesaw State (Feb. 15, 7 p.m.) and Lipscomb (Feb. 17, 7 p.m.). The Owls are 5-6 in the ASUN after winning three-straight games, while the Bisons – picked 2nd in the preseason poll – have won two in a row and are alone in 2nd at 7-4.
NOTEWORTHY: Ricky Doyle played seven minutes for the first time since Jan. 20 and scored two points, grabbed two rebounds and blocked a shot … Darnell Rogers (sickness) and Christian Carlyle (ankle) did not play.
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