DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – On a historic night, where redshirt junior
Luke Anderson eclipsed the 1,000-point plateau to become the 26
th player in program history to do so, Florida Southern men's basketball watched a large second-half lead slip away and fall 97-90 to the claws of the Embry-Riddle Eagles at the ICI Center Wednesday night.
"Very disappointing loss," head coach
Mike Donnelly commented. "Embry-Riddle was the tougher team tonight, and that's difficult for me to digest because our team has battled through a ton of adversity this year, and I am proud of our guys. But this is a high level of competition, and we need to do a better job embracing the hard. When it got challenging tonight in the second half, we didn't do a good enough job responding. I know we can give more and play tougher."
Luke Anderson, a native of Lakeland, Fla., led a trio of players with 20 points where he had 21 points on 7-of-14 shooting from the floor. He made two three-pointers and 5-of-6 free throws. He added five rebounds, one assist, one block, and one steal in his 35 minutes of action. His historic moment came in the first half when he drained a three-pointer to push to 1,002 career points at Florida Southern. Following the game's conclusion, he stands at a total of 1,025 for his collegiate career (seven points from USF).
Akol Arop and
Joe Moon IV added 20 points on the night when
Erickson Bans chipped in 16 points off the bench. The Moccasins (16-7, 10-4 SSC) tallied 52 first-half points and were held to 38 in the second half.
Malcolm Whitlow led all scorers with 41 points on 12-of-23 shooting, which featured five three-pointers while adding a 12-for-12 night from the free-throw line. He paced Embry-Riddle's (14-7, 8-5 SSC) scoring contingent while Dru Nickson and Milan Skoric were the only two in double-digits with 16 and 10, respectively.
Embry-Riddle opened up the game with a three-pointer but that was a short-lived lead as Florida Southern answered on its next two possessions for an early 5-3 lead after
Joe Moon IV made a layup and
Noah Louis sank a three.
The teams battled to four ties through the first four minutes before Florida Southern opened to a nine-point advantage, 20-11, with 14:28. In this run,
Luke Anderson started it off with a three-pointer which pushed him over the 1,000 career points in a Moccasin uniform. From the nine-point lead, Florida Southern pushed the lead to double-digits, even as high as 18 points (52-34), and cruised into halftime leading by 11, 52-41.
Anderson's three free throws at the 15:43 mark would hand the Mocs their first 20-plus point lead (21) as the forward connected on all three, 68-47. An 11-0 run by the Eagles cut it to just nine, 68-59, before cutting it to just a single possession, 73-70, with just 9:13 to play.
Leading by one with 6:06 to play, Moon would lay it in to make it a three-point game but a three from Whitlow tied this as the game dropped below five minutes remaining, 80-80.
The Eagles took the quick three-point lead and turned it into eight, 88-80, in just one minute, before Florida Southern battled back to within three points, 91-88, capped off by a second chance layup from
Luke Anderson after grabbing the offensive rebound.
Embry-Riddle made six final free throws to Florida Southern's one Arop layup down the stretch, as the Eagles went on for the 97-90 final and split the season series.
Florida Southern returns to action on Saturday, Feb. 10 as the Moccasins host Barry University in a 7:30 pm game at Streamline Sale Court inside the George W. Jenkins Field House.
