Radford Hands ECU Its First Loss

Wednesday, November 15

Greenville, N.C.

7 P.M.

East Carolina University

1-1

Radford

2-1

Radford

ECU

Photo by: Rob Goldberg

November 15, 2017 | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)

RESULT
Radford held ECU to just three field goals in the final eight minutes and the Pirates suffered a 73-66 loss inside Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum Wednesday night. ECU trailed by 14 late in the first half, but cut its deficit in half at intermission and rallied to take a three-point lead with 7:52 to play, but were outscored by 10 in the final minutes.

TURNING POINT
Ed Polite stole the ball in the frontcourt and went coast-to-coast for a layup giving Radford a five-point lead, 66-61, with 1:41 to play. ECU guard Isaac Fleming answered with a layup on the other end before Christian Bradford countered with a 3-pointer with 34 seconds to play.

ECU PLAYER-OF-THE-GAME
Senior Jabari Craig posted his first career double-double, finishing with a career-high 10 points and 11 rebounds, including nine defensive boards. Craig connected on 4-of-6 from the free throw and 3-of-7 from the field. He also blocked a shot that led to a B.J. Tyson runout dunk.

RADFORD PLAYER-OF-THE-GAME
Polite scored a game-high 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and collected two steals to lead the Highlanders. He shot 50 percent from the field (5-of-10) and was 7-of-9 at the charity stripe. He was the only Highlander to score in double figures.

QUOTE OF THE NIGHT
"Our team made a nice comeback in the second half. We got some defensive stops, got out in transition, got excited and got the crowd into the game. [Then some of our guys] got excited and came out of character. We had three or four possessions when we had a chance to take the lead, we had the crowd into the game, we had guys come out of character a little bit and do things that weren't their strength because they got excited. That really hurt us. We had a lot of self-inflicted wounds.
"Give them credit, they made a couple of big shots from 3. The one in the corner was a dagger for us and B.J. almost blocked it. They made some timely buckets on us late in the game that took the momentum right away from us." – ECU Head Coach Jeff Lebo

KEY PERFORMERS
Four ECU players scored double figured led by Tyson's 16 points. Kentrell Barkley added 13 and Shawn Williams netted 10 as did Craig. Fleming was the game's top assist distributor with seven.

BEYOND THE BOX SCORE
Tyson scored double figures for the first time since Jan. 3 (10 games played) … Tyson moved passed former teammate Caleb White into seventh-place on The American career scoring list, while also moving into 15^th-place on the school's all-time scoring list with 1,143 points … Craig grabbed double-digit rebounds for the second time in his career.

UP NEXT
The Pirates return to action Friday against Central Connecticut State in their second game of the Showcase On The Banks tournament. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. inside Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum.