SAN MARCOS, Texas – Ethan Montalvo scored 19 points, and Texas State shot 53 percent from the floor to open Sun Belt Conference men's basketball play with an 80-66 win over Georgia Southern in Strahan Coliseum Wednesday night.
Ike Smith and
Tookie Brown each netted 14 points to lead Georgia Southern (4-7, 0-1), while
Coye Simmons and
Mike Hughes each scored seven points.
Montalvo hit four 3-pointers as Texas State canned 6 of 13 from behind the arc. Amani Gant finished with 16 points for Texas State (7-3, 1-0), and Kavin Gilder-Tilbury collected 15 points and six rebounds.
The storyGant scored six points in a 20-5 Texas State run to start the game. The Eagles trimmed the margin to 10 points with three free throws by Hughes and trailed 40-29 at the break. The Bobcats were in the free-throw bonus 6:45 into the contest and went 16 of 18 from the charity stripe in the half. Texas State outscored the Eagles 9-1 over the first 3:45 of the second half, and a four-point play by Montalvo, who was fouled as he hit a 3-pointer, helped the Bobcats extend the margin to 18 points. The margin grew to as many as 22 points midway through the half before the Eagles made a late run. A pair of Smith free throws trimmed the margin to 10 with 2:16 to play, and Georgia Southern got two consecutive stops but came up empty on the offensive end. The Eagles finished the game 28 of 34 from the charity stripe but shot 35 percent from the field.
Quotable from Coach Mark Byington"It was men against boys tonight. The ball went up, and it was grown men who really wanted that ball, wanted that rebound, wanted that loose ball or they wanted to finish around the rim. We need to get tougher. We need to understand the importance of defense because if you had told me we'd score 66 points against this team, I'd have thought we would have won the game. I didn't know if we would be able to score against them, and we did. But we couldn't stop them, and that was the sad part."
"We kept attacking the basket, and we got really good shots that are tough to come by against this team. But we have to figure out the defense. If guys get as upset when someone scores on them as they do when they miss a shot, we're going to be in good shape. We have character, and we have everything inside of us. We just need to pull it out, and it's my job to help them pull it out."
Next upGeorgia Southern travels to UT Arlington for an 8:15 p.m. ET Sun Belt contest Saturday, Jan. 2, in the College Park Center.
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