Box Score
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern men's basketball team (11-13, 7-5 SSC) snapped a three-game winning streak Saturday, falling to the Rollins Tars (12-11, 6-7 SSC) on the road, 81-72.
Justin Jeangerard (Jr., Weaverville, Calif.) was two points short of his career high, scoring 24 points on 8-for-12 shooting.
Stian Berg (Jr., Baerum, Norway) earned team-best marks with six rebounds and six assists.
Brian Cahill (Jr., Arlington, Va.) had 16 points on 5-for-11 shooting.
"As Dickens once wrote, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," said head coach
Gary Tuell. "I thought in the first half we were filming a McDonalds HORSE commercial. I'll make one from here, you make one from there… off the wall, over the door, bouncing off the lady's head in the stands. You name it, everybody was knocking down three's. It was a heck of a shooting exhibition by both teams. It would have been amazing if both teams could have kept that up in the second half, but of course we didn't. We still finished with 19 3's, which is a good number for a game.
"But we lost this game on the defensive end. I have not been happy with our defense for the last two weeks. We are simply giving up way too many open shots and easy baskets. I don't know if its fatigue, effort, confusion, poor game plan or something else. We have four games left to figure it out. I know we can't win defending the way we did today. I've challenged our players to give a lot of thought to our defense and make suggestions before we practice on Monday. We're a family. We're a team and whatever the defensive issue is we'll work through it."
The first half was a shooting display by both teams. Although the Sharks led for the majority of the period, Rollins' Alex Blessig kept his team in the game by shooting 6-for-7 from 3-point range before the break and scored 18 points. On the other end, Jeangerard was a perfect from 3-point range at 6-for-6. NSU held its largest lead of the half at 17-10 with 13:45 remaining, but Rollins would tie it at 19 all quickly. However, Rollins would never take the lead after its first bucket and trail at the half, 43-39.
"Justin Jeangerard certainly was hot in the first half," said Tuell. I don't know that I've ever seen him shoot it like that. Brian Cahill was pretty hot too. But I don't know that any of those guys were shooting like Adam Allen and Alex Blessig. That was an incredible shooting exhibition for the first 20 minutes."
After shooting 58 percent in the first half, NSU hit a cold spell and missed 11 of its first 14 second-half jumpers. With the door open, Rollins retook to the lead at 53-52 with just over 12 minutes left. Berg snapped the drought with a midrange jumper to retake the advantage, but Rollins would answer right back.
The jumper by Berg would mark the Sharks' only points from the 16:36 mark to the 8:10 mark of the second half. Rollins would lead by as much as five points during that time. Two quick buckets tied the game at 59 all, but Rollins took over the game with a 10-0 run. NSU hit four 3-pointers in the last five minutes but could not make enough stops to climb back into the game.
NSU shot 10-for-30 in the second half, sinking the team's overall shooting percentage to 44 percent (24-for-54) and the 3-point shooting percentage to 46.3 percent (19-for-41). The Sharks were three 3-point attempts and two makes away from the program records. Rollins was a rare team able to outshoot the Sharks, finishing at 51 percent shooting (26-for-51) and 46 percent shooting from downtown (13-for-28). The Tars also went 16-for-20 from the free throw line.
Casey Carroll (So., Youngstown, Ohio) came off the bench to score 11 points on 3-for-8 shooting.
Maurice Fuller (Jr., Westfield, Ind.) and
Chris Page (So., Plainfield, Ind.) scored nine and eight points, respectively.
"In this crazy league, we're still in second place in the loss column," pointed out Tuell. "So while we lost an opportunity to separate ourselves a little bit, we didn't really lose much ground. I think our guys are trying as hard as they can. Rollins is just so long, and there length really, really hurt us in the second half. You have to give them credit, they played a great game. That's two games in a row they've played really well. They may be coming on at the right time.
"We have a lot of work to do between now and Wednesday night at Barry. But we're still having fun. This is a crazy league, isn't it?"
NSU will return to South Florida but stay on the road with a game at Barry Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.
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