Sunday, December 30, 2007

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. - The ETSU men's basketball team held on despite a 14-0 offensive explosion by Appalachian State in the final three minutes to take an important non-conference victory over its former Southern Conference rival 72-69 Sunday afternoon at Memorial Center. It was the first meeting between the old foes since the 2004-05 campaign, ETSU’s last in the SoCon.

The crowd of 5,017 got a dramatic end to a game that had been dominated throughout by the Buccaneers. Leading 66-50 with 3:49 left in the game, the Bucs’ defense looked on as the Mountaineers found their shooting touch and connected on four 3-pointers and a pair of free throws to make it 66-64 with just under a minute remaining.

From there, the Bucs went a perfect 6-of-6 from the foul line to ice the game. Senior forward Andrew Reed (Port Richey, Fla.) was the story of the game, netting a career high 24 points to go along with 12 rebounds for his fourth career double-double. Meanwhile, sophomore guard Mike Smith (Vandalia, Mo.) turned in the No. 23 jersey he started wearing this season and returned to his freshman No. 1, responding with a season high 15 points.

“That’s a huge win for a lot of reasons,” said ETSU head coach Murry Bartow, whose team improved to 6-7. “I’m concerned that we can’t seem to play a solid 40 minutes. We played great for 36 minutes, but it got really ugly at the end. It’s still a great win especially to beat a team like Appalachian State which was coming off a win over Arkansas last week.”

The Bucs built an early lead in the first half thanks mainly to a stingy 2-3 zone and some poor shooting by the Mountaineers. In the end, the Bucs hit on 58 percent of their shots in the first half and Appalachian State managed just a 23 percent clip to trail 38-20 at the intermission.