WHEELING, W.Va. — West Liberty, Fairmont State, Glenville State and Concord advanced to Saturday’s semifinal round of the Mountain East Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at WesBanco Arena in Wheeling. All tournament games are broadcast on the MetroNews TV App.
(Game recaps by Duane Cochran for MountainEast.org)
No. 2 Fairmont State 68, No. 10 Point Park 55
In the opening round of the Mountain East Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament here at WesBanco Arena, Fairmont State watched Point Park run its deliberate and methodical offense to near perfection.
In Friday’s quarterfinals, the second-seeded Falcons weren’t about to let the 10th-seeded Pioneers do that again.
Fairmont State’s defensive pressure and sneaky trapping game plan in the halfcourt caused some confusion at times for the Pioneers, forced them into several miscues and ultimately led to a 68-55 FSU victory.
The win improved Fairmont State to 25-4 and earns the Falcons a spot in Saturday night’s semifinals against sixth-seeded Glenville State at 8:30 p.m. The Pioneers knocked off third-seeded University of Charleston, 77-65, Saturday afternoon.
“It was a really good win for us,” FSU coach Tim Koenig said. “I thought they shot it really well at times and got some really good looks, but we mixed our defenses and I think that really helped us.
“Also, guys made plays for us. That was a key.”
Fairmont forced 17 Point Park turnovers in the game, including three shot clock violations in the first half, a five-second call on an inbounds play, and a 10-second violation in the backcourt. The Falcons proceeded to outscore the Pioneers 20-5 in points off of turnovers in the contest.
“Communication on defense is a key for us,” said Fairmont State’s Sam Emich. “There were a couple of times when we weren’t communicating and it cost us in terms of some corner threes, but when we did communicate, yeah it was pretty good.
“We threw some different things at them. It’s nice that we’re able to do that. It made a difference.”
Point Park stymied Fairmont early on the game leading for the first 8:47. However, buoyed by a pair of Anthony Spatafore 3-pointers, the Falcons closed the final 11:20 of the first half on a 26-17 spurt to take a 32-27 lead at the break.
“We were confident at first,” Pioneers guard Nick Marshall said. “We got to a point where we had only missed four shots, but we had five turnovers and three of those were shot clock violations and then the dead ball turnover. With that happening, we just had to get shots up. Not getting shots up, whether they went in or not, just kills your momentum. We really just needed to be more aware and we weren’t.”
In the second half the Falcons’ defense held Point Park to just two points and without a field goal in the first six minutes as they extended their lead to 11 at 42-29. After that the Pioneers never got any closer than eight the rest of the way.
“We lost Nate (Nathaniel Van to an early-game shoulder injury) early on and didn’t have (Aiden) Miller and it’s human nature, given those circumstances, that guys are going to try to do more to try to help the team,” Point Park coach Kevin Reynolds said. “In reality, you need to really keep doing what you do. When you try to do more and do superhero-type stuff in a good fashion, you tend to make mistakes and those then tend to snowball. Against a team like Fairmont State, they’ll take advantage of it.
“Every time we did that they got two or three and-ones, especially in the second half and, boy, those were momentum changers.”
Offensively, Fairmont shot 62 percent from the field in the second half (13-of-21) to open a 22-point lead with 5:18 to play before settling for the 13-point win.
The balanced Falcons were led by Andre Harris and David Jolinder, who both finished with 12 points and Rudy Fitzgibbons, who chipped in 10. Emich and C.J. Little both added 12 points apiece for FSU.
Point Park, which finished its season 11-19, was led offensively by Aidan Anderson’s 13 points. Nazareth Fisher turned in a double-double performance scoring 10 points and grabbing a game-high 12 rebounds. The Pioneers also got nine points from both Marshall and Kaden Warner.
Saturday’s semifinal appearance will be the sixth for Fairmont State in the last seven years.
No. 6 Glenville State 77, No. 3 Charleston 65
An old adage that it is tough to beat a team three times in a season proved to be true Friday afternoon in the Mountain East Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament quarterfinals here inside WesBanco Arena.
Sixth-seeded Glenville State, which had dropped a pair of regular season games to the University of Charleston, shook off a rough start and turned the tables on the third-seeded Golden Eagles recording a 77-65 victory.
The win improved the Pioneers to 17-12 and earned Glenville State a spot in Saturday’s semifinals against second-seeded Fairmont State at 8:30 p.m.
GSU, which shot 25.7 percent from the field in the opening half (9 of 35), struggled for much of the game’s first 12 minutes and found itself trailing UC by as many as nine on three occasions. However, in the final 7:27 of the half Glenville State rallied to outscore Charleston 13-4 to knot the game at 28-28 at the break.
The Pioneers’ momentum carried over to the final half as they opened the last 20 minutes on 23-11 spurt to push their lead to 51-39 with 11:14 to play.
“We started getting stops,” said GSU freshman guard Elijah Redfern, who led the Pioneers with 21 points. “That’s what changed.
“Going into halftime we knew we weren’t shooting well, but we also knew we had to keep getting stops and keep rebounding the ball and eventually our shots would fall and they did.”
The Pioneers won the battle on the boards 47-38 and did a masterful job of getting themselves to the foul line where they connected on 21 of 27 attempts. UC, on the other hand, was just 9-for-9 at the line.
Glenville State did get shots to fall in the final half as it connected on 15 of 27 field goals (55.6 percent), including a 5 of 10 showing from long range.
“All year, coach has preached to us that if we win the rebound and turnover battle, he doesn’t see us losing,” GSU’s Samier Kinsler said. “We also talked about putting together a full 40 minutes of basketball all year. Today, we finally did it. Our goal now is to keep doing it and keep coming out with wins.”
Kinsler finished with 16 points and six rebounds, while Ammar Maxwell chipped in 14 points and eight boards. Don Colon-Lewis grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds for the Pioneers, including nine in the pivotal second half.
The loss snapped a seven-game winning streak for Charleston, which finishes the season at 18-10.
UC, which missed a plethora of makeable shots at the rim in the second half, shot 37 percent from the floor in the final 20 minutes (13 of 35). The Golden Eagles tried on a number of occasions to make a run at Glenville in the second half, but every time the Pioneers had an answer.
“I’d put that on myself because I have experience and won the championship last year so I knew they were going to make a run,” said UC senior point guard Dwaine Jones, who finished with 10 points and a game-high seven rebounds. “Some of our young guys haven’t been here before and maybe didn’t know what to expect.
“I think I did a bad job from a leadership standpoint. I should have done a better job of getting us together and keeping our heads on straight at that point.
“But I also think that it’s March and they were really fired up to play and made their runs on us,” Jones added. “My former teammate, Samier Kinsler, came off the bench and really gave them life and, unfortunately, we just did a bad job of responding to it.”
Ja’Corey Lipkins led Charleston with 19 points and seven rebounds. UC, which won the tourney last season, also got nine points from C.J. Meredith and eight from Zach Loveday.
No. 1 West Liberty 102, No. 8 Davis & Elkins 77
Death, taxes, and the West Liberty men’s basketball team making the semifinals of the annual Mountain East Conference Tournament are certainties in life.
Friday evening at WesBanco Arena, the top-seeded and No. 5 ranked Hilltoppers earned the right to make their record-setting 12th consecutive appearance in the tournament semis when they dominated eighth-seeded Davis & Elkins en route to an impressive 102-77 victory.
West Liberty, which has made the MEC semifinals now in all 12 years of the league’s existence, improved to 26-3 with its 14th consecutive win. The Hilltoppers will play Saturday at 6 p.m. for the right to advance to Sunday’s championship round. West Liberty has made eight appearances in the championship game and has won four MEC Tournament titles.
“It matters for us,” West Liberty coach Ben Howlett said. “Especially when the tournament shifted to Wheeling. We’ve got a home court advantage here.
“It never surprises me when you look out there and the crowd just keeps filling in and filling in. That presents a really good college basketball atmosphere for these guys to play in. I know our guys appreciate our fans and I know they’re going to show up tomorrow.
“This is something we take a lot of pride in. We want to win every game we play. Tomorrow is another game, but it’s a game to get in the championship. This is what we want to do. We’re on a three-game mission here.”
That mission started slowly Friday mainly because of West Liberty’s six-day break since the end of the regular season. Eventually, the Hilltoppers shook off the rust, turned up their defensive intensity, and cruised to a 46-28 halftime lead over the Senators.
“I actually thought at the beginning of the game we were good defensively, but I think our guys may have been a little too amped up, especially on the offensive end,” Howlett said. “We did a good job of keeping them in our press there in the first half. They only scored 28 points in the first half, so I felt like our halfcourt defense was really good. We made stuff tough on them.
“In the second half, we were much better offensively. We started passing the ball better and obviously ended up with 21 assists. We had seven at halftime. Twenty one assists by the end of the game, that’s kind of who we are.”
To upset West Liberty a team has to play a near-perfect game and hope the Hilltoppers do some uncharacteristic things like not shoot the ball well and have miscues on both ends of the floor. D&E saw some of those opportunities present themselves early last night, but couldn’t take advantage of them. The Senators missed some makeable shots near the rim and suffered 13 first-half turnovers.
“West Liberty is a very, very talented team and coach Howlett does a phenomenal job,” said Senators’ coach Daniel Harris. “They have really good players and a really good system. We just kind of ran into a buzzsaw.
“We turned the ball over too much. We missed some timely layups when we needed them, but the one thing I can say is our guys played really, really hard.”
D&E’s Charleston Ponds, who led the Senators with 18 points and nine rebounds, agreed.
“It’s very frustrating when you can’t take advantage of opportunities when they’re there,” Ponds said. “Especially against West Liberty because once they get ahead not too many teams are able to come back on them.
“I was just trying to tell my guys to stick with it, stay together and keep playing hard. It was my last game and that’s all I was asking – to not give up and to keep fighting.”
West Liberty was led by Daniel Autrey’s season-high 25 points, 21 of which came off of a season-high seven made 3-pointers. The seven made threes ties him for third all-time in an MEC Tournament game. Twenty of Autrey’s points came in the second half.
The Hilltoppers also got 14 points and eight rebounds from J.J. Harper, 14 points and six boards from Kyler D’Augustino, and 10 points and five assists from Lanyc Shuler.
In addition to Ponds’ 18 points, Davis & Elkins, which finished its season at 12-18, got 15 points and 12 rebounds from Nick Silva, 15 points from Isaiah Buckley and 10 from Kerem Sariaslan.
No. 4 Concord 92, No. 5 West Virginia State 84
(Story by Bryan Shepherd/WVSU)
West Virginia State University Men’s Basketball concluded its season with a 92-84 loss to Concord on Thursday night at WesBanco Arena. The Yellow Jackets (15-13) battled to a 38-38 tie at halftime but were outscored in the second half as Concord (17-10) pulled away late.
The first half saw both teams exchange early baskets, with Concord taking a 3-0 lead on a three-pointer by Kraig Gilbert. Jae Slack responded with a jumper to put WVSU on the board. Concord extended its advantage to 6-2 before a three-pointer from Miguel Martinez cut the deficit to one. The Yellow Jackets used a 7-0 run, capped by a Martinez fast-break dunk, to go up 16-9. Concord countered with a three-pointer from Ken Sallee to stay close. WVSU maintained the lead through the midway point of the half, fueled by inside scoring from Slack and Martinez. Concord’s Brendan Hoffman hit a three-pointer to make it a one-possession game. The Mountain Lions later tied the contest at 35-35 on a fast-break layup by Hoffman. After an exchange of baskets in the final minute, the teams went into halftime even at 38.
In the second half, Concord struck first with a layup from Josiah Rickards, but Kenyon Giles quickly answered for WVSU. The Mountain Lions began to assert control with a 9-2 run, extending their lead to 47-42 following a three-pointer from Hoffman. WVSU trimmed the deficit to three after a layup from Martinez, but Concord maintained its edge with key second-chance points. With just under seven minutes remaining, Concord’s Boubacar Djigo’s dunk gave the Mountain Lions their largest lead of the game at 77-67. WVSU made one last push, cutting the deficit to three at 81-78 after a fast-break layup from Slack. However, free throws from Rickards and a late layup by Gilbert secured the win for Concord.
Slack led WVSU with 21 points, while Martinez added 17. Jaden Byers finished with 15 points, and Nate Mims contributed 10. The Yellow Jackets shot 50% from the field but struggled from three-point range, making just 2-of-13 attempts.
Saturday’s schedule:
(Women’s Semifinals):
No. 1 Fairmont State vs. No. 4 Frostburg State – Noon
No. 6 Glenville State vs. No. 7 West Virginia State – 2:30 p.m.
(Men’s Semifinals):
No. 1 West Liberty vs. No. 4 Concord – 6 p.m.
No. 2 Fairmont State vs. No. 6 Glenville State – 8:30 p.m.