ST. LEO, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team's bid for two hard-fought conference wins in a row fell just short on Saturday night, 93-88 on the road to Saint Leo.
The game between the Sharks (2-1, 1-1 SSC) and Lions (3-1, 2-0 SSC) featured 18 lead changes, with No. 17 putting the Sharks ahead for more than three straight minutes midway through the second half in front of a hostile crowd. Their biggest advantage was four, for the last time at 10:04, 72-68, but the Lions scored the next seven to move back ahead.
NSU would tie things up twice more, with the 11th and final deadlock coming with just 3:06 left, on a baseline drive and dunk by
Nick Pendergast (Sr., Bridgewater, Conn.) to knot things up at 81-81. Again, Saint Leo would string together a mini-run, this time five straight. Three quick points by
Chris Page (Sr., Plainfield, Ind.) made it as close as it would get, two, at 86-84, at the 1:49 mark.
Saint Leo scored five of the next six points to lead by six, and though a 3-pointer by Page with less than 10 seconds left halved the deficit, two free throws on the ensuing possession clinched it for the Lions.
"If this were a gymnastics or diving competition, I don't think either team would have scored a lot of style points, but Saint Leo played harder and seemed to want this one a little more than we did. They certainly played better as a team than we did," said head coach
Gary Tuell. "The first 20 minutes we never found any rhythm or intensity. We didn't have the same energy or enthusiasm to compete that we showed in our opening two games at home. Maybe we were tIred from playing our third game in six days, but this was Saint Leo's fourth game in eight days and they were able to summon just enough energy in the final minutes to finish the job.
"We fouled too much, especially in the first half," Tuell continued. "We weren't as aggressive as we needed to be in key areas like the press, our half court defense, blocking them out, contesting shots or getting to the offensive glass.Our shot selection wasn't always good, we missed too many free throws and and our execution in the half court offense was disappointing. We tried a ton of different combinations but we played pretty poorly as a team. Still, I thought we had a ton of opportunities to win this game, especially when we took the four-point lead with 10 minutes to play. I felt the momentum beginning to turn our way. When the score was tied at 81 with three minutes to play we were right where we needed to be but couldn't make the effort plays that were needed to win."
The Sharks made one less shot in one less attempt than the Lions, shooting 43.5 percent to the victors' 44.3. NSU canned 10 3-pointers in total, led by four from Page and three from Pendergast, and outrebounded the taller Lions 50-42, behind a career-best 15 from
Harrison Goodrick (Jr., Sydney, Australia). He cemented his double-double effort on Saturday with 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting, while Page had 24 points and Pendergast 19.
"
Harrison Goodrick did a good job battling inside tonight and had 16 points and 15 boards in only 21 mInutes," said Tuell. "
Nick Pendergast gave us 19 and six in 24 quality minutes. I really liked the big lineup we had with
Chris Page,
Casey Carroll (R-Jr., Youngstown, Ohio), Dwayne Gibson, Nick and Harrison. Maybe we've found something there we can build on in the future. But as a team, we are not shooting the ball anywhere close to our capabilities. And while we are still scoring a lot of points, we are not getting the stops we need to give us some separation from our opponents."
Also with good performances were backcourt mates
BJ Edwards (So., Fort Myers, Fla.) and
Dwayne Gibson, Jr. (Fr., Indianapolis, Ind.) chipped in with 10 and seven points, respectively, and combined for eight rebounds and five assists.
"You can look at a lot of factors and wonder, it was a very tiring road trip, so was that a factor?" said Tuell. "Was playing on the road instead of at home in front of family and friends a factor? This was our first road game for the four freshmen and other than Dwayne Gibson, I didn't think they played with the same energy and confidence that we saw in our first two games.All those things had an impact on our performance, but at the end of the day, I thought Saint Leo's guys just did more little things and played just a hair harder than us, which probably is the reason we lost."
For the Lions, Caleb Stewart led the way with 26 points, 22 after the break, along with eight rebounds. Ryan Burnett and Lawrence Watt each added 13.
The Sharks pack their things to head to the Lone Star State next, to Canyon, Texas specifically, for the Pak-a-Sak West Texas Thanksgiving Classic. Their first matchup there is against the host team, West Texas A&M, this Friday, Nov. 27, at 6 p.m. EST.
"Overall this was a good week for us," added Tuell. "We learned a lot about ourselves. We got to see a lot of different guys in different situations and that can't do anything but help us down the road. This is going to be a very good basketball team, but we were not a very good team tonight. We failed to do the things necessary to win, but we'll learn from this and be better next time. Once our guys figure it out they will be fine. We took two steps forward and one step back this week. If we can do that every week in November and December we have a bright future."
