Tulsa took advantage of a cold shooting night for ECU, snapped the Pirates’ six game home win streak and cruised to a 65-49 win Wednesday night behind 21 points from Brandon Rachal and 14 points from Jeriah Horne in Minges Coliseum.
ECU got 19 points from Jayden Gardner despite hitting just 3 for 8 from the floor. Gardner did manage to get to the charity stripe with regularity where he made 13 of 14.
“It was very frustrating. We couldn’t throw a rock in the ocean tonight. We had key moments and stretches during the run where we had wide open threes and couldn’t convert,” said Gardner, “Our transition offense was off tonight. It was just a really off night on both sides of the ball.”
Gardner outlined what Tulsa(11-6/3-1 AAC) was doing defensively that seemed to give the Pirates fits offensively.
“It was a lot of switches, a lot of hands on and a lot of stuff not called but it is what it is in league play,” said Gardner who told PirateIllustrated.com, “They’re very different and very versatile at the same time. I was watching the Houston game and they were doing a lot of things to get Houston off their rhythm. They were scoring the ball and defending very well. Tulsa is a very good basketball team. They’ll probably finish in the top half of the league. They are a very versatile team and they got the best of us tonight.”
The Golden Hurricane made good use of a 3-2 zone and then matched up well when the ball went to the high post. The Pirates hit just seven percent from the arc and sub 30 percent overall on just 14-48 from the floor. Afterward, ECU head coach Joe Dooley described his team’s shooting woes.
“We screened the wrong guy a number of times. We had a little bit of a far away look at times” said Dooley, “At some point you have to make some basketball plays and trust your teammates. When you go 2-26 from three everything looks terrible.”
“Of our 24 chances, 15 had no chance of going in. It was like we were running in mud in the second half and we started thinking. We turned down open threes in the first half. I thought we were open and we drove and then all of the sudden it was almost like an avalanche. We had a bunch that weren’t even close. I think for the first time in a while it also affected our defense.”
Tyrie Jackson went 0-12 from three-point land while Tristen Newton and Brandon Suggs did not fare much better, going a combined 1-6 from the arc.
“You’ve got to give Tulsa a lot of credit for the way they played defensively. I thought they did a nice job of controlling the tempo. I didn’t think we played particularly well in the first half. A lot of that could be attributed to them and I didn’t think we had a lot of pop,” Joe Dooley said afterward.
“In the second half we’re down six with nine and a half minutes left and just had a number of things - some of them were self inflicted and some of them were Rachel and Ugboh and Igbanu inflicted and we sort of never recovered. We were back on our heels.”
ECU got off to a slow start and Tulsa took as much as an 11-4 early lead. The Golden Hurricane did not lose the lead until the six minute mark when Bitumba Baruti’s jumper in the lane gave the Pirates a 25-24 lead.
After giving the lead back to Tulsa with just over five minutes to go in the half, Miles James’ three-pointer tied the game again at 30-30 at halftime. Jayden Gardner led ECU with seven first half points and Jeriah Horne scored seven for Tulsa.
The Pirates made just 9 for 25 shots in the first twenty minutes including just 2 of 11 from three-point range. Tulsa wasn’t much better at 9 for 24 and 2-9 from the arc. Both teams went 10-13 from the foul line in the first half.
Early in the second half, Tyree Jackson’s drive in the paint did give ECU a brief two point 34-32 lead, but it proved to be short lived with Tulsa recapturing a 39-34 lead behind baskets from Elijah Joyner and Jeriah Horne.
Rachal scored twice on a three point play in the lane then again in transition before hitting two free throws to help the Golden Hurricane open up a ten-point 46-36 cushion with 11:28 to play.
ECU had an opportunity to cut the lead to as little as four, but Gardner’s only missed free throw and Martins Igbanu’s follow of a Rachal missed free throw at the other end of the court with 6:40 left pushed the Tulsa lead right back to ten at 52-42.
Then with five minutes to play, Darien Jackson’s three-point jumper had Tulsa up by fifteen points at 57-42 and ECU was never able to recover.
The Pirates hit the road in four days to take on Cincinnati Sunday night at 6 o’clock on ESPNU.
