Two games following an extended amount of time off from playing games due to Christmas break and the COVID-19 pandemic, East Carolina’s men’s basketball team is still searching for the rhythm it had to begin the season.
The Pirates dropped their second straight game in frustrating fashion on Saturday inside Minges Coliseum, falling to visiting USF 69-63 to drop to 7-3 overall and 1-3 in the AAC. South Florida improved to 7-5 and 3-3 in league action. The Pirates fell to Tulane exactly a week ago, meaning they have dropped two winnable games in a row with a difficult league slate ahead.
ECU played its second consecutive game without starting guard Tristen Newton due to COVID-19 protocols. Backup point guard Noah Farrakhan was also out with an injury. That left the Pirates with just one true point guard in Tremont Robinson-White, who turned in a career day with 29 points in 35 minutes. But the guard didn’t get enough help, as Jayden Gardner (10 points and 10 rebounds) was the only other Pirate to reach double figures.
The Pirates were unable to practice Friday due to COVID-19 protocols before playing Saturday’s game.
“We need to get back to a routine,” Gardner said. “We’ve had a lot of COVID issues the last two weeks. We’ve had a lot going on, we couldn’t even practice yesterday. We still have Tristen out, and we just got another guy out with COVID. We just have to get in a rhythm of having practices and then games.”
ECU shot 38.9 percent as a team from the field and just 4-of-20 from 3-point range. The Pirates were also out-rebounded 41-33 by a big and physical USF team. USF’s David Collins finished with 16 points and Justin Brown scored 12, just one game after the duo did not score at all on Wednesday against Tulsa. Alexis Yetna also finished with 10. The Bulls went 8-of-22 (36.4 percent) from 3-point range.
None were any bigger than Brown’s start to the second half when he hit three consecutive 3-pointers to cap an 11-0 run, making it 38-32 USF with 15:50 remaining. The Bulls wouldn’t trail again, as Collins knocked down a pair of clutch 3s in a few ensuing sequences as well, keeping USF comfortably in front.
ECU made it interesting down the stretch. Gardner and Robinson-White combined for 20 consecutive ECU points before JJ Miles’ jumper trimmed the deficit to 67-63 with 53 seconds remaining. But East Carolina missed two consecutive 3-point attempts in the final seconds in a four-point game and couldn’t cut it to one possession.
“Tremont was great,” ECU head coach Joe Dooley said. “The point guard play was not where we lost the game. Our shot selection at times was bad and then we gave up some things defensively on ball screens we haven’t done all year.”
Gardner came off the bench for the first time this year after missing practice this week due to medical reasons.
“It was a slow-paced game, not really our style,” Gardner said. “They went on a bigger run (in the second half), but then we came back and were almost able to finish up the comeback. But that was a tough one, a tough one.”
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January 10, 2021 at 04:05AM
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ECU drops home contest against USF - 247Sports
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