East Carolina Cruises Past NC Central, 69-56

Saturday, December 3

Greenville, N.C.

5 p.m.

East Carolina University

7-2

North Carolina Central

5-3

NC Central

East Carolina

Photo by: Rob Goldberg

December 03, 2016 | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score

GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- Caleb White scored 20 points and East Carolina cruised to a 69-56 victory over North Carolina Central on Saturday night.

The Pirates (7-2) have won five of their last six games, and travel to No. 6 Virginia on Tuesday.

White was 8 of 15 from the floor and made four 3-pointers. Jeremy Sheppard had 13 points and three 3-pointers. B.J. Tyson chipped in eight points and has 1,007 for his career. Tyson is the 28th player in the program with 1,000 career points.

Patrick Cole scored 16 points on 5-of-18 shooting, and had five assists to lead NC Central (5-3). Rashaun Madison and Dajuan Graf added 11 points apiece.

The Pirates had a 10-point lead at halftime. The Eagles cut the deficit to 37-31 early in the second half but didn't get closer

IT'S A GAME OF RUNS

With the game tied at 4-all, East Carolina put together a 15-5 run, book ended by 3s from Barkley and White to take its first double digit lead of the game at 19-9.
NC Central pulled within five, 23-18, before the Pirates went on a 10-4 scoring spurt to go up by 11, 33-22, with 2:22 left in the first half. ECU lead by 10 at halftime, 36-26.
After the Eagles pulled within six at the start of the second half, ECU went on a 9-2 scoring surge to go up 13, 46-33, with 13:43 to play. NCCU never got closer than eight the remainder of the games and East Carolina led by double digits for the final five minutes.

BEYOND THE BOX SCORE

ECU won its 18^th consecutive non-conference game inside Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum and its 16 consecutive against a MEAC opponent overall.
The Pirates improved to 6-0 all-time against NC Central with a 3-0 mark under Coach Jeff Lebo.
Tyson first made field goal of the game put him over 1,000 points for his career becoming the 28^th player in school history to reach the millennial mark.
White scored double figures in both halves of a game for the first time this season, posting his fourth 20-game of the season and 14^th of his career.
Sheppard posted double digit points for the first time as Pirate and made a career-best three 3-pointers, while also distributing a career-best eight assists. It was his fifth straight game with a three.
Washington posted his second double figure rebounding game of the season. It was the sixth time in the last seven games in which he had a minimum of eight rebounds.
ECU scored a season-high 16 fast break points, topping its previous best of 12 against Grambling State.
The Pirates held N.C. Central to 26 first half points. ECU has surrendered over 30 points in the opening half just once this season.

THEY SAID IT
"Good win for the Pirates against a very good North Carolina Central team. I've got a lot of respect for LeVelle [Moton] and his program and how he does his work. Watching them on film I was very impressed. They have a very experienced group. They're older. They defend… Obviously when you take Ohio State to the end and you beat Missouri on the road that gets the attention of your team. They weren't afraid to go on the road and they've won.

Great win for us. I thought everyone on our team had a hand in it. Defensively we were awfully solid again and held them to under forty percent. [We won] the battle of the boards again and I thought offensively when we didn't turn the ball over we got pretty good looks. Sheppard was terrific in this game again… Clarence was terrific in the second half. Caleb was really good for the duration of the game. All of them [played well] defensively. [The box score] doesn't show a lot defensive statistics, but we did a nice job there." – ECU Head Coach Jeff Lebo on the win over NCCU

"We've got a tough stretch coming up here [which started tonight] and then we've got Virginia, then we've got Charleston and [UNC] Wilmington in this stretch, but I think we're getting better and the guys are working hard. This is a really difficult stretch when we've played a lot of games in a short amount of time so we haven't had a lot of practice time. We'll have a little more time during finals after this Virginia game to take a little bit of a deep breath." – ECU Head Coach Jeff Lebo on the team's current stretch of games

"We were just outplayed and out-coached. They were just better. We pride ourselves on being tough and competing at the highest level and we just didn't do that today. The most critical indication of that is offensive rebounds. They got sixteen and out-rebounded us by fourteen so just hats off to East Carolina. They brought the fight to us." – NCCU Head Coach LeVelle Moton

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