Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Basketball coaches talk about playing 40 minutes, but for the Lipscomb Bisons 24 minutes was enough against Belmont.

Trailing 38-20 with 4:03 left in the first half the Bisons changed gears, pulling to within nine points at 40-31 at intermission. They carried their renewed game plan into the second half Tuesday night to end Belmont’s Atlantic Sun unbeaten streak 73-64 in front of a sold out crowd of 5,122 at Allen Arena.

The secret to that crucial change was a timeout at 3:44 when Lipscomb coach Scott Sanderson decided it was time to stop mincing words with the second “Battle of the Boulevard” slipping away.

“For the first 16 minutes we were not very good,” Sanderson said. “We didn’t do anything we wanted to do offensively and defensively. I was extremely aggravated at our players.”

Despite having only one day between games to work on a game plan for Belmont, Sanderson had an effective plan in place.

“We had worked too hard,” Sanderson said. “We had a game plan and for 16 minutes we didn’t do it offensively or defensively. We lost guys on back cuts. We rushed offensively.

“We told our players during the timeout to just do what we had asked them to do to the best of their abilities. Our players got off of the mat and listened."

In the final four minutes of the first half the Bisons outscored Belmont 11-2. In the second half the Bisons held a 42-24 scoring edge.

“That is just a credit to our players,” Sanderson said. “Sometimes when you are frustrated the easy thing to do is to point fingers. We didn’t allow that to happen.

“To come back from an 18-point deficit says even more about the resiliency of our players. But it is one game with nine more games to go. We have 32 days to keep getting better until March gets here.”

The Bisons are 12-8 overall, 7-4 in the conference. Belmont is 18-4 overall, 10-1 in the A-Sun.

Center Adnan Hodzic, held to seven points at Belmont Jan. 13 in an 88-52 loss, scored a game-high 26 points. Forward Brandon Brown recorded his second double-double of the season with 17 points and a game-high 10 rebounds.

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