The Falcon men’s basketball team beat the San Jose State Spartans 85-79 on Wednesday night at the Stroh Center, as the team built a 20 point lead in this one but sloppy defense cost them the second half lead.
“I would rather turn a 40 point lead into a 20 point lead,” Falcons head coach Michael Huger said. “We turned a 14 point lead into a four point lead so those are things we have to work on. We are still a very young team and we are learning how to win close games and I like that but I don’t want to be in close games like this every night. You’ve got to capitalize on what you are building and and down in Buies Creek it was the same thing two games we built a 14 point lead and a 12 point lead and wound out squeaking the win out at the end. I would rather us learn how to finish better and get off to a better start in the second half and thats something that we’ve got to work on.”
The Falcons were paced offensively in this one by freshman guard Justin Turner who scored a game high 27 points while making five trey balls. He also had three assists, three rebounds and one swipe.
Junior forward Demajeo Wiggins finished tonight off with 17 points and 12 rebounds as well as four steals.
“We were getting stops on defense and were able to get out in transition,” Huger said. “They didn’t hit any shots early on in the game and we were able to take advantage of that in our transition, we stopped playing defense, we relaxed and they got into a rhythm and got comfortable and started to knock down shots. Welage knocked down big shots, Baumann knocked down some big shots as well. Once you let guys like that get hot and get feeling good about themselves and you are in for a long night and thats where we were tonight.”
There were things to be proud of in this one, but disappointing as well with how the team gave up the lead so quickly in the second half.
“The thing we are trying to get is consistent on the defensive end and you know playing it for 40 minutes,” Huger said. “We will play it in spurts but not the whole game and we forced some turnover and converted those into points and we needed everything tonight. All the guys contributed and it was a good win for us.”
The Falcons next game is Saturday against another group of Spartans, these ones from Norfolk State, on the road on Saturday night.
