STATESBORO, Ga. – Tookie Brown finished with 24 points to lead five Georgia Southern players in double figures, and the Eagles committed just one turnover in the second half in an 86-82 Sun Belt Conference men's basketball win over Troy Saturday evening in Hanner Fieldhouse.
Brown hit 11 of 13 from the free-throw line and added three assists and a steal, and
Ike Smith had 13 points, four rebounds and two steals for Georgia Southern (9-6, 2-0).
Mike Hughes scored 12,
Jake Allsmiller added 11 points and
B.J. Gladden chipped in 10.
Juan Davis, Jr. hit five 3-pointers and scored 21 points, both career highs, for Troy (8-8, 0-2), and the junior corralled a game-high nine rebounds. Jeremy Hollimon added four 3-pointers and 20 points as the Trojans scored 44 points off the bench.
The story
After Troy cut a 15-point second-half deficit to four, Smith hit a baseline runner, Brown converted a conventional 3-point play off a steal and Gladden added two from the charity stripe in a 10-3 run that pushed the lead to 11 points with 3:39 to go. The Trojans worked the margin to 81-77 on a pair of Holliman free throws with 57 seconds left, but Brown and Allsmiller combined to make 5 of 6 free throws from there to seal the win.
Georgia Southern led 37-31 at halftime, and Hughes scored five points in a 10-4 Eagle run to start the second half. The junior's triple from the wing put GS ahead 53-38 early in the period.
Georgia Southern committed a season-low six turnovers and shot 46 percent for the game, including 52 percent in the second half.
Quotables
Head coach Mark Byington
"It's Sun Belt basketball, it's conference play and everybody is desperate and everybody is fighting. You mix that with the fact that Troy is a good team and that could have created a problem for us. We have to make sure that we have maximum effort and bring it all day long and all game long, and I don't think we did that tonight. A lot of teams just try to learn in losses and try to make changes, and we have to learn from wins the same way we learn from losses."
On the offense
"Their game plan was to run us off the 3-point line, and we got off to a good start of realizing what they were going to do. Mike had a nice drive, and B.J. had two nice drives to start the game. Then we got away from it, and we were stubborn and tried to shoot contested threes."
Junior forward B.J. Gladden
On the game
"We stayed aggressive as a team. We made a few errors, but I feel like on the defensive end, we came down and got a couple stops that we needed and that was big."
On his offensive game
"When we set screens, I was popping and when they closed out, I was able to get to the basket a lot. That's really what I do - get to the basket and make plays for myself and others so I stuck with that and it worked today."
Sophomore guard Tookie Brown
On free throws
"My shot wasn't falling so I tried to impact the game on defense, get loose balls and stuff like that. I've kind of been struggling from the free-throw line so I've been practicing free throws and that helped out tonight."
On the turnovers
"I give credit to our scout team because they help us out a lot. We've gotten better with turnovers and that's made us a better team."
Next up
The Eagles play host to South Alabama Monday at 7 p.m. in Hanner Fieldhouse. It's the Semester Tipoff, and GS is giving away free t-shirts and free pizza to students. Plus, one lucky student will have a chance to win an adidas gear prize package (valued at $250) by sinking a half-court shot.
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