Pirates Fall at Wichita State 72-55
Wichita State controlled their senior night contest with ECU from early on and never gave the Pirates much room to operate offensively. The Shockers went on to take a 72-55 win at the Round House.
Markus McDuffie led the Wichita State with 16 points. Asbjorn Midtgaard tossed in a career high 11 points on five of six shooting to go along with six rebounds and Dexter Dennis added ten points in the win.
The play of ECU point guard Isaac Fleming down the stretch continued to improve though and he was once again very solid Tuesday night.
“I thought he was really good. He gave us some good minutes. Shawn Williams made some shots and I thought Rico gave us great minutes off the bench,” stated Dooley, “Besides that, we had a bunch of open looks that we missed. We were 3 of 15 from three. I bet we had twelve wide open looks and if you don’t make shots it makes everything look a lot worse. They keep coming at you with 6-11, 6-10 bodies and I thought they wore us down a bit.”
ECU got 17 points from Fleming to go along with seven rebounds to lead the Pirates. Shawn Williams added 12 and Rico Quinton played his best game as a Pirate with a double-double of 11 points and 10 rebounds in just 27 minutes of work.
Pirate forward Seth LeDay left with an ankle injury in the second half and Jayden Gardner was hobbled a little late in the game, but he appeared to come out of it relatively unscathed. We will know more about their status in the coming days.
With the win, the Shockers improved to 16-13 and 9-8 in league action while the Pirates fell to 10-19 and just 3-14 in AAC action.
“I thought our effort was good. We did good things but in a stretch where we miss a wide open three and give up a second chance basket. We missed a couple of free throws that might have cut it down and every time we had a little bit of momentum we couldn’t get a stop,” ECU head coach Joe Dooley said afterward.
“This is a hard place to win if you don’t execute almost perfectly.”
After two early ECU baskets, the Shockers went on an 18-5 run over the next eight minutes to take a 18-9 lead after a Dexter Dennis fast break dunk.
But three Shawn Williams jumpers, a Seth LeDay dunk and a jumper from Isaac Fleming kept the Pirates close at 24-18. That was until Wichita State went on another 8-0 run where the lead ballooned to fourteen at 32-18 with 3:30 to go in the half.
Jayden Gardner didn’t score his first points until the 3:25 mark in the half and only ended up with five points for the game. He did pull down six rebounds. But with rare exception, the Pirates remained largely ice cold in the first half at the offensive end of the floor at just 28 percent.
Wichita State, despite 33 percent shooting, took a 34-22 lead into the locker room at halftime.
Fleming for ECU and McDuffie for Wichita State led their respective teams with eight points each at halftime.
The lead was at 44-32 after on three Isaac Fleming baskets with just fourteen minutes left and the lead remained at twelve with eight minutes to go.
A pair of missed free throws from Gardner and an Erik Stephenson three-point bomb had the Shockers up 67-49 at the four minute mark and they cruised the rest of the way.
ECU ended up making 44.4 percent of their second half shots to improve to 35.6 percent for the game despite just 20 percent from the arc. Wichita matched that with 44.1 second half shooting to end up at 39.1 for the game including just 3 for 10 from the arc.
The Pirates wrap up the regular season at home for Senior Day this Sunday when ECU hosts UConn. Tipoff is at 2 pm.
