Home Local Sports USI Men’s basketball season comes to an end in St. Louis

USI Men’s basketball season comes to an end in St. Louis

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USI Men’s basketball season comes to an end in St. Louis

Aces drop MVC tourney opener 

  1. LOUIS – Freshman Chris Moncrief scored a career-high nine points and Kenny Strawbridge Jr. added 12 points in Thursday’s Arch Madness opener against Indiana State.  Highlighted by a 51-point second half, the Sycamores won by a final of 97-58 inside Enterprise Center.

“I thought we had a good game plan.  Give credit to Indiana State for how they played and how focused they were,” UE head coach David Ragland said.  “We played them a few times this season coming off losing streaks and that added some fuel for them.  Indiana State fought to the end and our guys did too.”

“Life is a journey and this is a chapter of it.  I told our group to take their experiences from this year and learn from it.  In order to succeed, you need to learn how to fail.  We have good guys who got better every single day and really brought it.”

Strawbridge led the Purple Aces with 12 points and five rebounds.  Moncrief, Yacine Toumi and Gabe Spinelli added nine points apiece.  For Moncrief, it was a career-high, surpassing his previous mark of six points.

Indiana State recorded the first seven points of the game with Toumi getting UE on the scoreboard with a free throw.  The Sycamores extended the lead to 12-3 before Evansville got closer with a basket from Preston Phillips to make it a 14-7 contest.  ISU responded with a 5-0 spurt to take a 19-7 advantage at the 13-minute mark.

Toumi hit another basket that made it a 19-9 score just over a minute later while ISU answered once again with eight points in a row to hold a 27-9 lead.  The Sycamores led by as many as 19 points (44-25) in the opening period before a Chris Moncrief 3-pointer cut the halftime deficit to 46-28.

In the opening moments of the second half, ISU pushed the lead to 20 points while Preston Phillips converted a triple to get closer at 53-36.  Up by a score of 58-40, Indiana State took control with a 31-10 run to go up 89-50. They picked up the victory by the same deficit.  ISU shot 58.5% in the game with UE wrapping up the game at 33.3%.

Robbie Avila led the Sycamores with a game-high 21 points.  Cooper Neese tallied 19.

 

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