Mustangs Run Past ECU 86-46
DALLAS - SMU moved to 19-4 and 9-1 in AAC play after blowing out error prone East Carolina 86-46 in Moody Coliseum Wednesday night. The Mustangs won their sixth straight game against the Pirates behind 19 points from Shake Milton, 19 from Semi Ojeleye, 15 from Sterling Brown and 14 points from Ben Moore.
Kentrell Barkley was the only Pirate in double-figures with 14 points. Deng Riak and Jeremy Sheppard added nine points each for East Carolina(10-13/2-8 AAC).
"We certainly didn't see this one coming after two days of good practices and a shoot around that was as good as I've seen in years," said interim ECU head coach Michael Perry, "We were clicking on all cylinders shooting the ball, high energy and I thought we'd have a really good performance tonight and obviously we didn't. We came out and got a little bit unglued and out of character. A team like SMU can do that to you in a place like this and we succumbed to their experience and the crowd and all that other good stuff that creates problems for young teams and that's exactly what happened tonight."
Deng Riak scored seven promising early points for ECU that gave brief hope of a competitive outing. But that proved short lived when the Pirates went ice cold from the field while SMU went on a 37-13 run behind treys from Sterling Brown, Semi Ojeleye, a pair of three-point bombs from Shake Melton and a Ben Moore dunk.
Ojeleye’s thirteenth point added to the SMU offensive barrage with a nifty up and under three-point play in transition with 7:23 on the first half clock and the rout was on for the Mustangs.
Moore, Milton and Brown kept the offensive fireworks going in a 43-17 first half blowout with just under three minutes to play before halftime. Milton defied gravity at one point slapping the basketball into the basket from the middle of the paint on a loose ball before nailing his seventeenth first half point on a three-point jumper in a 49-20 contest at intermission.
SMU connected at a 55 percent clip from the floor on 16 of 29 shooting and 6 of 14 from three-point land to just 28.6 for ECU who went 8 of 28 overall including just one of ten from the arc in the first twenty minutes of play.
Lethargic was the word of the day scoring wise for ECU. Meanwhile SMU continued to pour it on offensively in a 66-27 game with former President George W. Bush in attendance at court side. SMU’s Ben Moore literally played volleyball with himself in the paint at one point before Sterling Brown’s three-pointer and Jarrey Foster’s dunk made it 70-27 midway through the second half.
ECU connected on a sparse ten baskets in 29 minutes of play. Pirates finally got their 30th point of the game on a Jeremy Sheppard three-pointer at the ten minute mark.
The Pirates finally eclipsed the forty mark on a Jeremy Sheppard three-pointer with three minutes to go in an 80-41 contest. Even the walk-on Leo Kontopoulos got into the act with a midrange jumper as the Mustangs emptied the bench late in the game. A Deshawn McDowell dunk with a little over a minute to go and a Jonathan Wilfong jumper put the exclamation mark on SMU’s 19th win of the season against just four losses.
SMU hit 49 percent from the field and 33 percent from the arc to just 30 percent for ECU who committed 17 turnovers, hit 7 of 25 from the arc and just 9 of 15 from the foul line.
