Tuesday, December 04, 2007

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. - After giving up a large second half lead and then losing by one point in overtime earlier this season at Marshall, the ETSU men's basketball team was faced with what could have been a similar situation Tuesday night in Memorial Center. This time the Bucs didn't fold.

Watching a 13-point lead dwindle to five with just under a minute left, the Buccaneers made the defensive stops they needed in the final seconds and converted at the foul line to finish with a 79-73 win over Conference USA's Thundering Herd in front of 4,080 blue clad fans. With the win, ETSU improved to 4-3 on the young season, with Marshall dropping to 4-2.

"Any time you can beat a Conference USA team it's a good win," said ETSU head coach Murry Bartow, whose team will now head on a five-game road trip with games at Oklahoma State (Dec. 8) and Syracuse (Dec. 15). "When you play as tough a schedule as we have so far this year, you have to win your home games and defend you home court. We've done that so far. I think we're learning a lot about our team and we know the one thing we can do is score. We just have to learn to defend better."

Indeed, the Bucs once again rolled on the offensive end of the floor, hitting 54 percent of their shots (27-of-50) and committing just 14 turnovers. While the Bucs still were out-rebounded 38-36 and gave up 16 offensive rebounds, ETSU did cut back on its foul issues, actually going to the line 38 times compared to just 18 trips for the Thundering Herd.