LORMAN, Miss. – Extending its winning-streak to five games, the Alcorn State University men's basketball program pulled out a 63-60 victory over Alabama State on Monday at the Davey L. Whitney Complex.
Alcorn (10-9, 6-2 SWAC) trailed 60-59 late when senior
Troymain Crosby hit a jumper from just outside the paint to put the Braves up 61-60 with 47 seconds left. On the other end of the floor, junior
Anthony Fairley blocked a three-point attempt and Alabama State (3-17, 2-5 SWAC) was forced to foul.
Crosby knocked down a pair of free throws to give Alcorn a 63-60 edge with 15 seconds remaining. The Hornets fired a contested three-pointer with six seconds left that was off the mark, but the ball went out of bounds off Alcorn.
With one second remaining, the Braves fouled. Alabama State missed the front end of the 1-and-1 hoping to get an offensive rebound, but it went Alcorn's way to seal it.
Senior
Deshaw Andrews, the reigning SWAC Player of the Week winner, registered 17 points and nine rebounds. He was 4-of-8 from long range.
Also in double-figures were senior
Corey Tillery with 15 points and junior
Arne Morris with 10.
As a team, the Braves withstood a hot shooting night from the Hornets as they were 9-for-18 (.500) from long distance. Alcorn shot just .387 from the field and .333 from beyond-the-arc, but still found a way to win.
Leon Daniels netted a career-high 25 points for Alabama State, including 9-of-11 from the field and 6-for-7 from three.
Alcorn started behind 10-5 when Tillery drained a three to spark a 7-0 run and put the team ahead 12-10 with 13:10 remaining. The Braves then used a three and fast-break lay-up by Morris to go on a 9-0 spurt to extend it to 23-13 with 7:22 to go.
The Braves kept the Hornets in check for most of the first half and carried a 36-29 lead at the break.
Alabama State came out firing in the second and quickly made it a 43-42 game on a three by Tobi Ewuosho at the 15:48 mark. The Hornets took their first lead of the half 46-45 on a lay-up by Brandon Battle with 13:54 left.
The teams went basket-for-basket in the final 14 minutes. Andrews hit a three to give Alcorn a 57-54 edge with 5:53 remaining. but Alabama State came back with inside buckets from Tyrese Robinson to lead 58-57 at the 3:30 mark.
Alabama State's final lead, 60-59, came on a dunk by Robinson with 2:14 to go. After both teams made stops defensively, the Braves scored the go-ahead bucket on Crosby's jumper with 47 seconds left.
Up next, Alcorn will travel to Southern on Saturday for a 5:30 p.m. tip. The all-time series is tied 61-61. The Braves are 6-3 against the Jaguars under head coach
Montez Robinson.
NOTES
- Alcorn is now 6-3 against Alabama State under Robinson.
- Robinson, who is in his fifth season at the helm, improved to 45-35 against the SWAC.
- Alcorn has now won 9 of the last 10, and 13 of the last 15 home games at the Davey L. Whitney Complex. The Braves have outscored the opposition 707-511 at home this year.
- The Braves won the rebounding battle 38-35 and have not been outrebounded by a conference opponent this season.
- Andrews was one rebound shy of his second career double-double. He posted his 25th career double-figure scoring game and 13th this year. His nine rebounds were a season-high.
- Tillery turned in his 14th double-digit scoring performance as a Brave. He was 3-of-7 from three-point land.
- Morris submitted quality minutes off the bench for his second double-figure scoring game of the year. He was 4-for-7 from the field and 2-for-3 from long distance.
- Fairley secured nine rebounds to match his career-high for the third time this year. He also swatted four blocks in the contest.
Quoting Alcorn head coach Montez Robinson
Opening Statement
"One of the things we talk about as a team is being able to win close games. We know that opponents are going to try and press up on our shooters and take shots away. It's a testament to our guys for being able to execute down the stretch. At halftime, we emphasized to the team about letting the offense make plays for you, and don't try to make plays for the offense. We didn't want to get stagnant, and we needed to execute down the stretch to win this game tonight. We also played really well defensively. We guarded well and didn't allow them to get all the paint touches that they wanted. They had a 25 percent three-point shooter get really hot tonight, and most of them were contested. We just have to continue working on correcting the little things and staying focused and staying together."
On what the biggest key was to winning tonight
"In addition to making plays late, we only turned the ball over eight times tonight. In order to win close games, you can't turn over the ball, especially down the stretch. The goal is always to be under 10 turnovers and we only committed eight. We did a great job of not giving Alabama State any easy baskets."
On Anthony Fairley blocking a three-point attempt late
"He's played well as of late and has really stepped it up. He did a great job of going up and getting rebounds tonight, and he also had some tough blocks at the rim. Those blocks were really huge for us and played a big part in this game. He got the game ball tonight in the locker room – he didn't score much, but he impacted the game on the defensive end and got some really big rebounds."
On what needs to be done moving forward
"We just need to continue to get better. We'll take it one game at a time and won't get ahead of ourselves. I still believe that this team doesn't even know how good they can be yet. We're still working at it."
#FearTheBrave
