University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Basketball Loses At East Carolina, 77-66
11/14/2005 12:00:00 AM | General
Files associated with this release:
Final Statistics (PDF)
Final Statistics (HTML)
Basketball Loses At East Carolina, 77-66
GREENVILLE, N.C. -- The Southern Miss men's basketball team didn't get off to the start it wanted on its two-game road swing, losing Wednesday to East Carolina, 77-66, in front of 4,826 here at Minges Coliseum on the ECU Campus.
With the loss, the Golden Eagles fall to 10-16 overall and 1-13 in Conference USA play, while the Pirates improve to 9-17 overall and 4-10 in the league.
It was another struggle in the opening period for Southern Miss, which found itself down 12 points, 25-13, midway through the first half. But the Golden Eagles rallied behind the hot shooting of Michael Ford to pull to within one, 27-26 with a little more than four minutes left on the clock.
Then Southern Miss regained the lead on Jason Forte's 3-pointer to go up, 29-27, at the 3:14 mark, capping off a 16-2 run. The teams then traded baskets over the final few minutes of the half and went into the break with the score knotted at 34.
In the second half, the game went back-and-forth once again, with the score being tied four more times, the last at 51-51 with 11:04 left in the game. But from there, the Pirates went on a 26-15 run over the final 10 minutes to pick up the victory.
Ford paced Southern Miss with a game-high 22 points, 16 of which came in the first half, while Jarekus Singleton added 16 points in the losing effort. Ford also led the team in rebounds (6) and tied with Dante Stiggers for a team-high five assists. Stiggers' five assists now give him 401 for his career, ranking him second all-time behind Casey Fisher's total of 612.
For the Pirates, Corey Rouse paced four players in double figures with 21 points while also grabbing a team-best 13 rebounds. Mike Cook and Tom Hammonds added 19 and 15 points, respectively, while Moussa Badiane added 13 points and also had 13 boards. Japhet McNeil had a game-best seven assists.
Now, the Golden Eagles stay in the state of North Carolina for the second game of the season-ending road trip, traveling to Charlotte to take on the nationally ranked 49ers on Saturday. Tip-off for the contest is set for 2 p.m., CT.
