ECU Slump Grows in 69-52 Loss to South Florida
PI Photos: USF 69 East Carolina 52
Things have gone from difficult to worse in fast order for Jeff Lebo’s ECU Pirates who fell 69-52 Tuesday night for their fifth straight loss. To make matters even worse the defeat comes at the hands of what was a five win USF ball club coming into to the game.
In all fairness, USF played probably one of their best contests of the season behind Jahmal McMurry’s 21 points along with 18 from Chris Perry. That spelled bad news for a tired Pirate ball club who hit just 34 percent of their shots for the evening in the loss.
Caleb White managed to score 13 points, but it was a product of 5 of 13 shooting while Kentrell Barkley was the only other Pirate in double-figures with ten points. Prince Williams and B.J. Tyson were both held to just nine points each for an ECU ball club that was outmanned in the paint to the tune of 44 to 30 on the glass.
Orlando Antigua has been searching for some answers for his South Florida team and after busing from Philadelphia and Temple for Tuesday night’s game he may have found a few.
“I’m not sure we knew if we were going to beat them inside, but I knew we had a size advantage,” Antigua said after the game, "At the same time when you have that kind of size and as many fast twitch athletes as they have inside you have to worry about on the other side how you’re going to defend them and move, but today we were fortunate that we were able to use some of our size to our advantage.”
“Our guys moved the ball and they were looking for the openings in the zone when they were available and it was a huge step for us. We executed very well and we needed to execute well so that we couldn’t let ECU get into transition off of turnovers and bad decisions because they change ends so quickly. It goes back to those athletes in so many positions.”
South Florida had only won three of their last nineteen contests so the win Tuesday night in Greenville served to help the moral of his ball club who was clearly in desperate need of a victory.
“It’s a little bit of a confidence booster for our guys because they’ve been working extremely hard and we’ve been preaching to just keep working and keep doing the little things, play the right way. Execute, share the ball, defend and rebound and the results will take care of themselves,” said Antequa, “So I’m happy for those kids. They were real excited in the locker room. Now we can enjoy this, get back home and try to prepare for this weekend. I thought our defense was really good at getting out to B.J. Tyson and Williams quickly because those are two really talented players. Because we were able to not turn the ball over they weren’t able to get out in transition.”
For Lebo, his team picked up a couple of solid wins recently, but have also lost a couple of multiple overtime contests of late that have taken some of the starch out of his team. He talked about the results of that after the game.
“Give South Florida credit. They played terrific and we did not play very well offensively. That was maybe one of the worst offensive games we’ve had all year,” Lebo said, “We’ve been playing really well offensively. We couldn’t make a shot, we got hurt on the glass and they made, I can’t tell you how many times late in the clock they made shots. They must have have gotten late clock shots from McMurray and Morello multiple times. Probably double-figure times and we couldn’t make a shot. We couldn’t even make a shot when they weren’t even trying to guard us in the last two minutes, so it was a frustrating night for us.”
“Give South Florida credit because they had a lot to do with that. Their two-guard McMurray was terrific,” said Lebo, "We didn’t get much inside at all. We’re not strong in there but we didn’t get a lot. Our four and five men I don’t think got a basket in the game, so it was difficult for us to try to win against that size.”
When asked if his team was out of gas on this particular evening, Lebo put things in perspective.
“They looked tired, but USF had to bus down here from Temple and offensively we just couldn’t make a shot."
After ECU went up 5-0 on a pair of scores from B.J. Tyson, Jahmal McMurray scored three straight baskets to give USF an early 9-5 lead.
Two Jaleel Cousins baskets then extended the Bulls' lead to 13-7 before Angel Nunez, Ruben Guerrero, a trey from Jahmal McMurray and a Nunez baseline jumper pushed the USF lead to 23-12.
The Pirates put together a run keyed by a Caleb White tap-in and a left corner baseline three-pointer from backup point guard Lance Tejada. Suddenly ECU(10-16/2-11) was within three at 23-20.
But two Morello buckets put the Bulls up by ten at 33-23 with 2:12 to play before USF(6-21/3-11) took a five-point 35-30 lead into the halftime locker room behind twelve points from McMurray and eleven from Morillo. White led ECU with ten first half points.
Kentrell Barkley’s three-point play and subsequent right baseline jam kept ECU in a four-point 41-37 ball game. But USF’s lead grew to seven after a Jake Bodway turnaround jumper in the lane and a Jahmal McMurray three-point bomb. Things only got worse after buckets from Perry, Ziegler and Morillo extended the Bulls’ lead to eleven with less than six minutes to play.
Nehemias Morrillo’s three pointer and Jaleel Cousins’ tip in found South Florida up 65-48 at the three and a half minute mark.
Two McMurray free throws and a Chris Perry basket underneath put the Bulls up 69-52 with two minutes remaining where USF coasted in from there.
ECU hit just 34 percent from the floor to 47.4 for USF and connected on just 7 of 23 from the arc and only 9 of 19 from the charity stripe in the loss. The Bulls connected on 9 of 16 from three-point range including 4 of 8 from Morillo in the win.
USF got 34 points in the paint and 16 points off of 14 ECU turnovers to just 20 points in the lane for the Pirates who got a total of three points from the inside trio of Kanu Aja, Mike Zangari and Michel Nzege.