The AU men’s basketball team won an ugly game in the Patriot League Quarterfinals, defeating the Army Black Knights 57-40 Feb. 29 at Bender Arena to advance to the semifinals.
The scoring was evenly distributed for the Eagles (20-10, 10-4 PL), as point guard Daniel Munoz led the team with 11 points to go along with four assists, two steals and four rebounds.
The Black Knights (12-18, 5-9 PL) did not score their first points until five and a half minutes had gone by, as the game was a defensive battle. AU took a 23-11 lead into halftime, after both teams struggled from the floor in the opening 20 minutes.
“It was a really physical game,” AU Head Coach Jeff Jones said. “A lot of contact; I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be an official in this one.”
The Eagles increased their lead at the beginning of the second half, going on a 9-2 run in the first four minutes.
Although Army did a nice job of limiting Charles Hinkle (3-10, nine points), different players stepped up for the Eagles.
“We had a lot of different guys chip in,” Jones said. “When a team works as hard to limit Charles’ opportunities as Army did, we [have to] have other guys step up.”
It was AU’s defense that was too much for Army in the end, as the Black Knights could not score more than 40 points by game’s end.
“That’s the one thing that Coach Jones stresses from the day we walk in on the first day of October until the end of the season is defense, defense, defense,” Munoz said. “His phrase this year has been ‘grind it out’ every possession, possession by possession, and I think in this latter part of the year, we’re starting to turn it up defensively.”
Though the victory may not have been pretty, all teams want to do come conference tournament time is win.
“At this time of the year, you just [have to] survive and advance, and we’re real happy to have a chance to play again on Saturday,” Jones said.
The Eagles now travel to Bethlehem, Pa., March 3 for a semifinal matchup against No. 2 Lehigh University, where great defense will be just as important. The Eagles will have to contain Lehigh’s junior guard C.J. McCollum, who was named the Patriot League Player of the Year.
“Lehigh’s a terrific team,” Jones said. “C.J. McCollum is a very, very good player. But I like our team too. So we’ll tee it up, and we’ll see what happens.”
blasky@theeagleonline.com
