I am sure that there is a great sense of relief inside the program as the team heads into Finals. It was a much needed win for the guys, who have truly struggled thus far this season. While FIU is not a great team, this is not a pushover team. They're certainly better than a Howard team we did lose to.
To make matters more difficult, Scott Thomas, our most consistently productive player, did not play due to back spasms brought on by a practice injury. To win anyway was very good.
Here's the game flow (76-67 final). Coach Orr mentioned in particular a point where we got 5 straight stops, which you can see as that little flat part of the FIU line. The series of stops came at what I am coming to believe is the most critical part of a game, which is between the 8 minute and 4 minute media timeouts. That time is when the dynamics for the final part of the game are established. That little run did just that, and BG had very comfortable leads in the final minutes, despite heavy pressure from FIU.
Now, an observer of this year's Falcon team will notice one thing especially....76 points for us....without our leading scorer. That's 35 and 41 by half, and gives us 3 straight halves where we have had good offense. Obviously, this is a good trend, though one that is still in the early stages. FIU was known to defend poorly, and we took advantage. Dee Brown had a career high 24 and did it using a very low number of possessions....he was 6 of 8 from the field, 3 of 4 from 3, and 9 of 13 from the line. He averaged 1.5 points every time he concluded a possession.
BG also got productive minutes from a number of players. Notably, Danny McElroy had 15 points on 6 of 10 shooting and 3/4 from the line (that's 1.32 points per possession) and A'uston Calhoun came around from his slump with 12 point (6 of 9 shooting). It is difficult to over-state the idea that this is a different team when those talented players contribute.
Fouls limited Cam Black to 12 minutes, but BG still controlled the boards (Black and Calhoun with 6) and Erger and Sealey gave some good minutes off the bench.
From a team standpoint, BG won each of the four factors. BG shot over 50% from the field and hit 33.3% from 3, which are both season highs. Yes, BG did not even shoot this well against Ohio Dominican. We took care of the ball and kept FIU off the offensive boards, and we got to the line, though we only shot 61%. On defense, FIU shot 43% which is our 4th best of the season and while it is not what we hope (I assume), it was enough to win.
We averaged 1.08 points per possession, our best D1 total of the season. The game had 70 possessions, 1 above our average for the year.
So, with a win, our guys can head into exams with a feeling of some relief. Obviously, the team is not out of the woods yet. We head to Wisconsin to play UWM...a good team that beat us last year and is 4-5 against a tough schedule to date. The end game is the conference season, and you'd like to see the trend start to point up by then.
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