The AU men's basketball team will take a win any way they can get it, but after a dominating 74-56 performance against Lafayette Saturday, winning big is always more fun.
"That was great," junior Brayden Billbe said. "We really needed that."
The Eagles (7-13, 3-4 Patriot League) saw various bright spots, including some assertiveness from freshman Brian Gilmore. At the 7:57 mark of the second half, Gilmore ran the floor waiting for junior Arvydas Eitutavicius to find him on the break. When Eitutavicius passed it to him 10 feet from the basket, Gilmore took two steps and without hesitation hammered the ball through the basket. It was a microcosm of the team's steady performance overall.
The Eagles' well-balanced scoring left four players in double figures and complemented a good defensive effort that permitted just 18 field goals to the visiting Leopards (9-11, 3-3).
Junior Andre Ingram led AU with 14 points and nine rebounds. Billbe and Junior Linas Lekavicius scored 12 points each and freshman Derrick Mercer added 11.
"I've believed all along that we have a chance [to be good]," AU coach Jeff Jones said. "I wouldn't be pushing them so hard if I didn't think we had it in us. And maybe we don't have it in us to do this game after game right now, but we've got to strive for that."
AU's gritty rebounding advantage - 43 -14 - dictated the outcome of the game.
The Leopards didn't record a rebound until halfway through the first half and trailed on the boards after the first 20 minutes, 26-4.
The Eagles trailed early but banded together a 28-9 run for a 37-20 halftime lead. Their largest lead was 29 points.
Aside from their workman-like performance, it was the Eagles' variety of special plays that entertained the home crowd at Bender Arena.
At 13:30 in the first half, Mercer fed freshman Jordan Nichols for an alley-oop slam, giving AU fans a peak of the duo's future.
And then in the second half, Ingram drove the left baseline and threw up a reverse prayer that bended a path from six feet above the rim down through the basket. The score read 53-30, but the crowd erupted to Ingram as if he had hit the game-winning shot.
For one of the few times this season, the Eagles never relented their large lead and played two solid halves of basketball.
"We took the fight to them early and I think we did that in the second half as well," Jones said.
After a disappointing road loss to Navy last week, Jones said he yelled at the team, but didn't tax their bodies over the weekend.
"The old-school way to do things would be to kick their [butts] and make it as unpleasant of an experience as you could," he said. "We chose not to do that because we needed this win so much."
Instead, Jones asked former AU guard Demek Adams, a 2003 of the program, to address the team.
"I don't know what was said, but knowing Demek, the message was probably a pretty good one," Jones said.
