Bison heat up late, top Towson

After starting the year on an emotional high with a victory over cross-town rival Loyola, the Tigers were unable to produce back-to-back wins falling to Bucknell Wednesday night, 71-57, at the Towson Center.

"One of the things that we spoke about all week was that we can't live on the Loyola experience," Towson head coach Pat Kennedy said. "We made all of the hustle plays in that game and played wonderful. But every game is different in college basketball based on how teams play. You've got to play well every single night."

Senior guard John Griffin, who finished the game with 21 points and four assists, led the Bison who controlled the game from midway through the first half until the game's end. The Tigers' forward Junior Hairston recorded his second double-double in as many games, netting 12 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. Center Tony Durant led the Tigers in scoring with 13 points.

"Junior played really well tonight," Kennedy said. "He had two guys blocking him out at all times the whole game. He played such a spectacular game the night before I think we were just depending on that."

Rocky Coleman got the Tigers off to a start offensively scoring seven of the teams first nine points including a step-back 3-pointer off the dribble start the game.

Halfway through the first half the Tigers jumped out to a 17-11 advantage. However, the Bison did an excellent job of adjusting to the Towson 1-3-1 defense hitting three straight 3-pointers to claim a 20-19 advantage with 8:20 to play in the first half. Bucknell continued their sharp shooting hitting a total of six first half threes including five of their last seven to take an six point halftime lead.

"They just shot the ball extremely well from three point land," Kennedy said. "You cut the cake in this business a lot of different ways but sometimes if you nail your threes the offense looks great and the ball movement looks great and everything looks great. When you don't make shots it slows down what you're trying to do."

The first few minutes of the second half was a back and forth battle, which saw the Bison, answer every Tiger basket and keeping them at arms-length.

Towson opened the final stanza shooting 3-15 from the field. Meanwhile the Bison forced back-to-back turnovers and turned them into four points, stretching their lead to 11 on a fast break dunk by Josh Linthicum.

Bucknell claimed its largest lead of the game on a 3-pointer by Justin Castleberry in front of his own bench to give his team a 60-41 lead.

However, the Tigers showed signs of resilience turning some defense into offense and cutting the deficit to 12 with just under four minutes to play.

But Castleberry hit another three seal the deal for the Bison.

"This was a great learning experience for us," Kennedy said. This team is still young and they're learning. We didn't play well tonight and we know that."

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out