NEW ORLEANS – Wesley Person scored 26 points and hit his first seven attempts from 3-point range as Troy blitzed Georgia Southern, 90-70, in the quarterfinal round of the Sun Belt Men's Basketball Championship Friday night in in Lakefront Arena.
Ike Smith led Georgia Southern with 21 points to go along with four rebounds, and
Tookie Brown tallied 14 points and five assists.
Mike Hughes posted 12 points and five rebounds.
Person was 9 of 11 from the floor and 7 of 8 from 3-point range, and Jordan Varnado added 26 points and seven rebounds on 9 of 12 shooting. Jeremy Hollimon collected 17 points, five rebounds and three assists. Troy shot 60 percent in the game and made 14 of 22 from long distance.
The Eagles fall to 18-14 and will await word of a possible postseason bid in the NIT, CIT or CBI. The Trojans improve to 20-14 and advance to the Saturday's semifinal round, where they meet Georgia State.
The story
Troy hit five straight 3-pointers in the first seven minutes of the game to distance themselves, and the Eagles never recovered. Person made the fifth, and it put the Trojans ahead 17-8 6:50 into the contest.
Georgia Southern scored six points in a row to trim the deficit to 21-17, but Troy erupted for a 17-5 run, keyed by six points from Varnado, to open a 16-point lead. Person dropped in Troy's eighth 3-pointer of the half with 29.4 seconds left, and the Trojans led 44-26 at the break.
Troy shot 56 percent in the first half, and Person was 5 of 5 from downtown. The Eagles shot 53 percent in the second half and made 8 of 13 from 3-point range but never cut the deficit below 16 points.
Quotables from head coach Mark Byington
"I thought we had a good week of prep and we were prepared and ready to play, and I felt for the first few minutes, we were playing okay. Then we made a couple mental mistakes and let Person get going wide open, and he made some open threes and started to see a big rim. It became contagious for them. It's hard when you do so many good things in the season and you come down to the tournament, and we didn't play our best basketball and ran into a team that's playing great basketball. It was a combination of us not playing our best, and I thought Troy deserves a lot of credit because they played terrific. They had us on our heels tonight and they shot the ball lights out."
"The last two years here we've been good in the second half and terrible in the first half offensively, and so that's what we have to figure out. Sometimes, you have to keep going through these experiences, and this might be the plan for our guys for the future to do something great. I told them it's okay to hurt right now, and I want the hurt and disappointment to drive them. I hope this is not the last game for this team this year. We've done a lot of good things, and we have a lot of guys who laid it on the line tonight. I know this experience is going to drive us to work harder, and the next time we get down here to New Orleans, these experiences can help us."
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