Box Score LAKELAND - It's debatable which Florida Southern player had the better night in Wednesday night's game against Ave Maria, but there's no doubt they came from the same family tree. With Terry Jenkins hitting seven 3-pointers and scoring 27 points, and Brandon Jenkins scoring 17 and coming within two rebounds of a triple-double, the Moccasins improved to 5-3 with a 94-72 win over the Gyrenes.
The 27 points were the second highest total of Terry Jenkins' career, with the fifth-year senior going seven-for-13 from behind the arc and 10-for-17 overall. He gave Florida Southern its first points of the night with back-to-back 3-pointers and later sparked a 14-0 run with a long jumper and another 3-pointer that gave the Mocs a 25-7 lead with ten minutes gone.
Later in the game, after Ave Maria had trimmed a 20-point deficit down to eight, the elder Jenkins hit two more 3-pointers to help push the lead back to 16. The, with the Mocs ahead 86-72 with just under three minutes remaining, he drove in the dagger with consecutive 3-point shots to put the Gyrenes away for good.
The stat line for Brandon Jenkins was a little more interesting. Going seven-for-nine from the floor and making all three of his 3-point attempts, the youngest Jenkins brother scored 17 points, but he also handed out a career-high 11 assists and grabbed a team-leading eight rebounds. He added three steals on top of that and committed just one turnover in 29 minutes.
Brandon reached double digits in assists with 3:08 remaining, but could get only one rebound the rest of the way. The Mocs have never had a triple-double in their 84-year history, but Wednesday night's effort was almost as close as anyone has come to doing it. Marshall Lester came within a steal in 1978 against Rollins, and Mark King missed it by one assist in a double overtime game at Long Island in 1982.
As close as Brandon Jenkins got to a triple-double, Ave Maria's Marc Rozanski almost beat him to it. The junior guard finished with 18 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. He had all of those numbers going into the final three minutes, but was unable to add to them.
The Moccasins also got 19 points and eight assists from Rion Rayfield on Wednesday, and 10 points from Damon Ellison. A.J. Hawkins scored eight and all of them seemed to come at critical spots in the game.
It was actually Hawkins' defense that got Florida Southern going after Ave Maria had taken an early 2-0 lead, and the Mocs' first three possessions ended with two missed shots and a turnover. Hawkins then blocked a shot by Dylan Fugate, which led to a fast-break 3-pointer by Terry Jenkins. He added another block one shortly after that, then picked up a steal that led to a Terry Jenkins jumper and an 11-4 lead by the Moccasins.
A tip-in by Hawkins early in the second half gave them a 13-point lead, and when the Gyrenes later went on a 22-10 run that cut the Mocs lead to 73-65 with 6:44 remaining, the junior forward hit a jumper in the paint and followed that with two free throws to put ahead by double digits the rest of the night.
Florida Southern ended up shooting 51 percent in the game, and was 17-for-29 (59 percent) from 3-point range. The 17 3-point field goals were the third most in team history. In addition to the ten made by the Jenkins brothers, the Mocs got five from Rayfield and two from Cameron Wooten.
Ave Maria shot 45 percent overall and was 7-for-15 from behind the arc, with Rozanski, Fugate and Tyler Cutrer all making two. Rozanski's 18 points led the Gyrenes, but four others reached double figures as well. Cutrer scored 12, Jimmy Torney had 11 points and 11 rebounds, and both Fugate and Chris Scanlan scored 10.
The win ended a six-game home-stand for Florida Southern, which will be on the road Saturday at Palm Beach Atlantic, with tipoff scheduled for 4:00 p.m.
