NC State Holds off Men’s Basketball 81-79

Friday, November 11

Raleigh, N.C.

7 p.m.

Georgia Southern University

0-1

NC State

1-0

Team	1	2	F
Georgia Southern	36	43	79
NC State	37	44	81

Tookie Brown tallied 26 points and 10 rebounds.

11/11/2016 10:44:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

The Eagles play their home opener Monday.

By: Marc Gignac

RALEIGH, N.C. – Terry Henderson tallied 23 points and seven rebounds, and NC State used a 13-3 run late in the contest to overtake Georgia Southern and hold off the Eagles 81-79 in the season opener for both teams Friday night in PNC Arena.

Tookie Brown collected 26 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and two steals to lead Georgia Southern and Ike Smith scored 20 points. Jake Allsmiller finished with 11 points, and Shawn O'Connell posted nine points and seven rebounds.

Abdul-Malik Abu collected 15 points, 11 rebounds and six blocked shots for NC State, and Torin Dorn posted 12 points, 11 rebounds and three assists. Maverick Rowan chipped in 17 points and nine boards.

The story
Georgia Southern led 66-60 after a layup by Brown that capped an 8-2 Eagle run with 6:26 to play. NC State responded with a 13-3 spurt to retake the lead, and a free throw by Dennis Smith Jr. made the score 73-69 in favor of the Wolfpack. GS missed nine straight shots during the stretch and went 1 for 4 from the free-throw line.

A jumper by Smith broke the spell, but Henderson made a pair of free throws and Smith scored a layup to extend the lead to 77-71. Brown hit a triple for the Eagles with 22.4 seconds left, but Henderson and Rowan each made a pair of free throws in the final 13 seconds to seal the win.

The Eagles trailed by 10 points midway through the first half before using a 14-5 run to get back in the game. GS held NC State without a field goal for over five minutes during the stretch and went into halftime trailing 37-36.

Georgia Southern played without last season's second-leading scorer, Mike Hughes, who is suspended because of a violation of team rules.

Quotables from Mark Byington
"I was really proud of our effort and like anybody in college basketball in the first game of the year, you're going to make a lot of mistakes and you just hope you can play hard enough to get through them. Our guys competed and they fought down to the very end, and I felt that we were one or two plays away from taking the game. There is a lot to learn from, and we'll keep moving forward."

"Normally, we're a good 3-point shooting team. That's what we do - we space the court and make shots. So the encouraging thing is that I know we'll eventually make shots and make our free throws, but we did other things that helped us tonight. So that's encouraging in that we were close to winning in a different way than what we're used to."

Next up
Georgia Southern plays its home opener against Coastal Georgia in Hanner Fieldhouse Monday, Nov. 14, with tipoff set for 7 p.m.

Georgia Southern Athletics provides up-to-date information on all its sports through its official website, GSEagles.com, through social media channels facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics, iOS app Georgia Southern Eagles and Android app Eagles GATA. For tickets to Georgia Southern athletics events, visit GSEagles.com/tickets.