ECU Streak at Four After a 82-74 Win Over Eastern Kentucky
East Carolina was down by seven points at halftime but fought back in the second half to pick up their fourth straight win, 82-74 over Eastern Kentucky in Minges Coliseum Saturday afternoon.
AAC player of the week Jayden Gardner led the Pirates with 25 points and 14 rebounds. Tyree “Pig” Jackson also started to heat up offensively, nailing four three-pointers in his 16 points to go along with six rebounds. Tremont Robinson-White scored 13 points and dished out four assists from his point guard spot and Bitumba Baruti put together a nice outing with eight points off the bench along with ten rebounds to lead ECU on the glass.
“Jayden is a real competitive player and he’s real consistent with what he does,” Baruti said after the game, "We all give him respect. He’s just an all around good player and he can do it all. We’ve won four games in a row, now let’s take it to five. That’s really what we’re trying to do one game at a time. It’s definitely a challenge but we’re up for it."
Jackson connected on several long three-point bombs from the right corner and talked about heading up offensively on Saturday and what that did for his ball club.
“If they’re going to give it to me, I’m going to take advantage of it,” Jackson said, “It kind of woke us up but then again we’ve got to prepare for what’s coming next. The more we play with each other, we’re getting a feel for each other’s game and it’s good coming into the conference play.”
With the Pirates’ sixth overall win and fourth straight victory, ECU is slowly closing back in on a .500 record after falling way behind earlier in the month.
“We need to make this an expectation and that’s building things over the course of time and not taking winning for granted either because it’s not easy,” Joe Dooley said afterward.
“Confidence is a weird thing. They have nowhere to look. There is no leader in front of them that they’re saying we’re going to look to him and see. We’ve spent more time working on us and trying to look at it long term. These young guys are going to have to play through mistakes. It’s frustrating at times but it’s not like we’re going to put a redshirt junior in the game right now because we don’t have any. You’ll see that exact same mistake won’t be made as many times.”
Jackson says the Pirates are getting more acclimated to each other every game and every week of practice that goes by.
“It’s great to be 6-7, it’s great to win. It just feels awesome. It feels good,” said Jackson, “We’re really clicking as a team and bonding as one. Every day we try to focus on getting a little bit better at everything and I feel like the guys have recognized how important it is to get this win and how important it is to be locked in every day at practice."
Jomaru Brown didn’t make it easy though when he heated up with 17 second half points and led Eastern Kentucky in scoring with 25 points. Tre King produced a double-double with 18 points, all in the first half and 12 rebounds overall, Ty Taylor had 12 points and the Colonels got nine of Mike Moreno's 11 points in the second half.
“Tyree did a nice job on him for the most part and then he had some fouls,” ECU head coach Joe Dooley told PirateIllustrated.com, "I thought Tristen (Newton) did some good and then when we got a lead, people were playing not to foul because you don’t want to put them on the free throw line and the other team is saying ‘drive it’. They got those four points on us off the free throw line late that hurt us but he (Brown) got on a little bit of a roll in the second half."
While the Pirates committed 20 turnovers which would typically spell doom, ECU forced 22 miscues from Eastern Kentucky, made 8 of 21 from three-point land and managed to get to the stripe 29 times, connecting on 18 free throws in the win.
“Give credit to Eastern (Kentucky). They put us on our heels in the first half. We’ve seen some pressure but not hard pressure and they really had us discombobulated,” said Dooley, "I thought the guys did a nice job in the second half after we got our bearings of being a little more aggressive and obviously we didn’t turn it over as many times until the last couple of minutes.”
Dooley credited the Pirates’ defense with overcoming a lot of things that otherwise could have easily led to a loss Saturday afternoon.
“We played a lot better and a lot of that was attributed to the fact that we got stops. I think at one point we had eleven straight,” Dooley said, “I thought that allowed us to get out and run and make some easy plays. Obviously we need to handle things at the end of the game a lot better. We handled them horrifically."
“Tyree did some good things with the threes and he stayed out of foul trouble,” Dooley told PI, “He’s a good shooter. He hasn’t shot the ball well and I think he’s starting to get comfortable. Let’s cut to the chase. He and Tremont (Robinson-White) they’re a month behind but no one cares. We’ve got to get these guys up and going. I think he’s starting to feel a little bit better."
After missing some early shots and failing to connect on several free throws along with nine turnovers in the first twelve minutes, the Pirates found themselves down by as much as 22-12 with 11:30 to go in the first period. ECU ramped up the pressure on the defensive end of the floor, leading to several Pirate baskets and suddenly ECU was back to within two at 22-20 with eight minutes to play before halftime.
Three Jayden Gardner baskets and a pair of Gardner free throws kept ECU close at 30-29 before three Tre King buckets including a long bomb with six seconds to go had Eastern Kentucky up 39-32 at halftime.
Despite Eastern Kentucky making just 3 of 13 from long range in the first twenty minutes, King scored 18 of his points in the first half alone to go along with nine points from Ty Taylor and eight more from Jomaru Brown.
ECU got 12 first half points from Gardner and six rebounds to lead the Pirates at halftime. While fifteen first half turnovers and 10-25 shooting did not help the Pirates' cause, 12 miscues from Eastern Kentucky did serve to help equalize matters.
The Pirates then tied the game up at 47-47 with 14 minutes to go on a fast break bucket from Gardner before finally grabbing the lead on a Robinson-White free throw. J.J. Miles’ three-point jumper and Gardner’s basket in the paint had ECU suddenly up by six points at 53-47.
Two Bitumba Baruti dunks and a Jayden Gardner basket later, ECU built a nine point 60-51 lead midway into the second half. Then with five minutes to go, Baruti and Robinson-White both scored before J.J. Miles added a long three-point bomb to give ECU an eleven point 74-63 cushion with 3:42 to play. The Pirates were then able to hold the Colonels off down the stretch to get the victory.
