ECU maintained a double-digit working margin for most of the game in a 73-64 win over James Madison Saturday afternoon in Minges Coliseum.
Brandon Suggs scored 18 points to lead four Pirates in double-figures including 16 from Bitumba Baruti, 14 from Tristen Newton and 13 points from Jayden Gardner.
Matt Lewis scored 19 to lead the Dukes along with ten points from Justin Amadi and nine from Jalen Hodge.
Suggs said defense was a big focus coming into the game on Saturday.
“That was a big emphasis. We knew they had a couple of great scorers who were averaging a lot of points so we established who we wanted to stop and stopped a lot of three’s that hurt us last year,” Suggs said afterward, “We just wanted to take it from them and play good defense in the first half and the second half and put it all together.”
Newton was pleased to pick up another win over a solid CAA team that has traditionally given ECU fits.
“It feels great. We’re learning how to win so we’ll take those wins and pick up some confidence,” said Newton, “We can get a lot better rebounding, defense and shooting,” said Newton.
The victory gave the Pirates their first undefeated non-conference slate in its history and the best since 2002-03 when ECU went 9-2. The win also gave ECU(6-1) their ninth unbeaten home non-conference run since the 1985-86 season.
“Obviously it was a little bit of a tractor pull there for a little big. We did some good things and had some really good stretches and we had some other stretches where we we were sluggish,” said ECU head coach Joe Dooley.
“We found a way to win the game but there are some things we have to do to keep getting better. There are also some things that we hadn’t done that we did. Good win after bouncing back from SMU. Now we’ll try to get our feet under us and get ready for Tulane on Tuesday.”
Joe Dooley seemed to be happy with the number of assists his team generated but didn’t seem overly pleased with his team’s ball movement overall and he talked about it after the game.
“We were one for ten on bad shots. We had 26 field goals, 17 of them were assisted. That’s a very good ratio. I didn’t think our offensive movement was very good. I thought we were a little stagnant," Dooley told PirateIllustrated.com.
"Obviously James Madison did a good job of switching on everything which brought us to a little big of a halt. The ball did move, we had some uncharacteristic turnovers. We stepped out of bounds, we stepped on an end line. Especially at the end of the game, you’ve got to get a shot up every possession. That’s something we need to continue to work on.”
Gardner scored eight of his ten first half points in the first ten minutes of an 18-15 ballgame before the Pirate lead grew to nine at 31-22 with 2:47 to go in the half. ECU would take a 33-25 lead into the locker room at halftime on 43.8 percent shooting despite just 2-11 shooting from beyond the arc.
Defensively, the Pirates forced nine James Madison turnovers in the first twenty minutes along and 19 for the game.
East Carolina’s lead expanded to as much at eleven at 49-38 with 12:37 to play on ten straight points from Brandon Suggs and a pair of buckets from Bitumba Baruti. Then Tristen Newton’s three-pointer gave the Pirates their biggest lead of the game at 59-43 with 7:21 remaining before his fourth trey of the game helped ECU(6-1) maintain at 64-49 cushion at the six minute mark.
James Madison(2-2) did manage to cut the ECU lead nine in the last two minutes on a three-pointer from Jalen Hodge and a pair of free throws from Terrell Strickland before ECU held on to take the win.
The Pirates return to the court on Tuesday when they take on Tulane at 3 o’clock in Minges Coliseum to wrap up the pre-Christmas schedule.
