Jags Use Strong Second Half To Down William Carey 82-64 In Home Opener
The South Alabama Jaguars Men’s Basketball team used a strong second half to defeat William Carey 82-64 in their home opener for the season. The Jags improve to 2-0 on the season while WCU used this game as an exhibition game.
William Carey led most of the first half but the Jags took the lead back late in the first half, but the Crusaders were able to steal the ball and lay it in before the buzzer to take a 36-36 tie into halftime. However the Jags would use a 12-0 run early in the second half to pull away.
“I kept telling everybody that that team was very athletic and could shoot the ball,” Jaguar head coach Ronnie Arrow said. “Not to take anything away from them, but we didn’t guard like we wanted to at the beginning of the game. We get a little hard-headed now and then where we have to be proven that they can shoot the ball and I think they proved it that they could shoot it in the first half.”
Sophomore Mychal Ammons earned his third consecutive double-double going back to last season with 19 points and 13 rebounds. “I think last year we played (Mychal) 95 percent outside,” Arrow stated. “He never played outside before but we thought that he could become a 6-foot-6 power ‘3’ man and all that skill work he did last year has helped him this year play the ‘3’ and the ‘4.’ He can put the ball on the floor better. Now he’s taking ‘4s’ off the dribble and when he takes it outside he’s taking ‘3s’ off the dribble so he can dribble penetrate better with all the experience he got from last year.”
Augustine Rubit, a junior, fell one rebound short of a double-double with 20 points, 16 in the first half, and nine rebounds. “I thought Aug was getting back to his form,” Arrow said. “He really isn’t back yet from his dislocated toe, but he was moving a lot better tonight.”
During the 12-0 run that put the Jags up for good, four different Jaguars contributed with scores. Junior Antoine Allen nailed back-to-back 3-pointers, the first for the Jaguars in the game, to cap off the run.
Midway through the second half the Jags had a 7-0 run with Xavier Roberson hitting back-to-back 3-pointers to extend the Jags lead to 59-44.
On the other side, William Carey opened the second half shooting 1-of-11 from the floor.
“We won’t face anybody all year that’s got a front line like they’ve got,” William Carey head coach Steve Knight said. “They finally started making some shots in the second half, and that hurt us. If you’re going to try to double the post, then they start making threes, it’s pick your poison. They did a much better job in the second half of mixing it up.”
Roberson scored 15 points, all in the second half. Senior Javier Carter tied a career high with three assists with seven blocks to tie him for fifth place in school history.
South Alabama will face Tennessee State on Monday at 3pm in the next round of the Coaches vs Cancer classic. They will play in Atlanta and hosted by Georgia State.
USA Men Defeat Spring Hill 73-40
The Jaguar Men’s Basketball team defeated the Spring Hill Badgers 73-40 in an exhibition game Monday night at the Mitchell Center. The defense led the way as the Jags held their opponents to 21.7% shooting in the second half and 28.3% for the game.
“I think that our defense was really good tonight,” Jaguars Men’s Basketball head coach Ronnie Arrow said. “We held them to 28 percent. Last year we beat them by 24 and won 17 games. We’ll use it as a measuring stick. We’ve got to go to work because the next game is a big game for us and we’ve got a lot of work to do as far as taking care of the ball.”
Sophomore Mychal Ammons scored 17 of his game-high 21 points in the second half while pulling down eight rebounds. He scored 10 in a row late in the second half. “I thought late in the game Mychal came up with some big things for us,” Arrow said.
Neither the Jags nor the Badgers shot well in the game. The Jags only converted 34.5% of their shots from the floor including 29% in the first half.
The Jags began on a shooting slump by going 0-for-10 with five turnovers in a stretch that spanned nearly eight minutes. That stretch allowed the Badgers to cut the Jaguar lead to 21-17, a mere four points, with 3:55 left to play in the first half. But the Jags defense turned up the heat and allowed the Jags to close the half with a 10-1 run.
“The press early was good but our half-court defense limited them and held them to 28 percent,” Arrow commented. “Any time you hold a team to 28 percent I think that’s pretty good.”
Mychal Ammons lead the Jags with 21 points going 8-of-11 from the field and 2-of-3 from three point range. Freddie Goldstein and Xavier Roberson both scored 13 points each. Goldstein added eight rebounds. Augustine Rubit chipped in 11 points and seven rebounds for the game. Three other Jags scored for the Jags as well.
The Jags wrapped up their preseason exhibition schedule with a 3-1 record. They will open up the regular season with a trip to Florida State on Friday with a game against the Seminoles set to tip-off at 6pm.
Jaguar Men’s Basketball Hosts Spring Hill College Tonight
The South Alabama Men’s basketball team will play an exhibition game on Monday night at the Mitchell Center. The Jaguars will host Spring Hill Badgers with tip off set for 7:05pm.
The game will not be broadcast on 105.5 FM WNSP due to the New Orleans Saints Monday night football game, but it will be broadcast on their website www.wnsp.com. You can view the game if you are a subscriber to the Jaguars All-Access service on USAJaguars.com.
This will actually be the team’s fourth preseason game. They had a three game exhibition tour of Canada where the Jags went 2-1.
“The biggest thing is, we got the experience,” Arrow said of the Canadian trip. “Unfortunately when we got back and we got started, Aug went out for three weeks and Javier was out for two weeks, so that put them behind. We’re just now getting everybody back healthy. We have some catching up to do.”
This will be the 20th meeting between the Jags and the Badgers with South Alabama holding a 16-3 edge in the series. “We hope that our fans come out and watch,” Arrow said. “I know Spring Hill will bring a nice group and we hope to have all of our fans come see what we have for this year.”
The Jags won last season 88-64 with an 18 point night by Augustine Rubit and a double-double from Mychal Ammons.
Coach Ronnie Arrow was pleased to get the team extra practices for the trip through Canada, but he says that there is still work to be done. “We still need a lot of work on different things,” Arrow said. “We’re working on the defensive part of all five guys on the floor getting after it. Offensively, with the things we’ve put in, the personnel is catching on a lot more quickly than last year.”
Spring Hill enters the game 0-2 so far this season with an overtime loss to Fisk 74-70 and an 83-46 loss to #24 Southern-New Orleans. They return four starters including Todd Martin, a former Jaguar who is the team’s top returning scorer.
Ronnie Arrow Speaks In Preseason Media Day Press Conference
South Alabama Men’s Basketball coach Ronnie Arrow spoke at the Sun Belt Conference media day on Wednesday. They also announced the all-conference teams and preseason polls earlier in the morning but they also listed the television schedule for the upcoming season.
The South Alabama – FAU game on February 9 was selected to be shown on the Sun Belt Network and the tip-off was changed to 7:30pm for the broadcast. Also the season opening game against Florida State can be seen on ESPN3.com at 6pm CST.
Below are highlights of the teleconference.
Coach Ronnie Arrow’s opening statement. “We have seven guys back from last year’s team, with Aug, Freddie, Javier Carter and Mychal Ammons, guys that were able to give us a lot of good minutes last year. Xavier Roberson broke a bone in his foot last year but is back full-strength. We’re looking forward to it. We think we have the players in place to be able to make a run at the championship, as long as everybody stays healthy. I think the conference is going to be up. Last year there were four to six teams that had seven or eight new players and now those teams have all those guys back this year with experience.”
Arrow spoke about the race for the Sun Belt title. “When you have Tony Mitchell back… I was telling everybody he could in the pros that I know that he was ready and he needs to go. He chose to come back and he brings instant notoriety to the league with a player of that status. I think Augustine Rubit is right there with him. I think Aug has proven he’s not only one of the top players in the conference, but also in the country. As far as teams being able to come on, we believe that we’re one of those teams. I think it’s going to be very competitive. Middle Tennessee has 10 of their 12 back, North Texas has a lot of their guys back and Arkansas State has a lot of their guys back. I think it’ll be a competitive race and there will be teams in this conference knocking off big-name schools in preseason.”
Arrow then spoke about how the preseason is going for the Jaguars so far. “We had an intrasquad game last game and we had some good things happen in certain areas. We’re playing Mychal Ammons inside and outside. He averaged 10 points and five rebounds as a freshman. If Tony Mitchell wouldn’t have been a freshman last year, Mychal would have been looked at as one of the top two or three freshmen in the league. He’s playing very well. We have a new guy, Viktor Juricek from Slovakia, who has come in and is learning. He’s getting Americanized quickly. He’s used to the European style where he hangs around the 3-point line, he can shoot the ‘3’, but we’re getting him Americanized so that he can go inside and outside. He’ll be a young man to watch this year. Javier Carter was the eighth-best shot blocker in the country last year before he got hurt and he ended up being the 16th-best shot blocker. Antoine Allen and Dre Conner are two guards that we brought in to keep people off of Aug and not be able to double down on him.”
Then Arrow spoke about getting ready for the season. “One of the things that helped us was our trip to Canada. We got to have eight practices and play three games over there. So we got to play against good competition to get us ready. With all the guys back and the new guys, it gave them a chance to know each other on and off the court. Our first regular season game is at Florida State, so we better be ready. So all of that and the strong non-conference schedule will help us.”
South Alabama has an exhibition game agaisnt Spring Hill College on Monday, November 5. They will begin the season against Florida State on Friday, November 9 in Tallahassee, Florida with a 6pm tip-off. The game can be seen on ESPN3.
Jags Basketball Split First Two Games, Final Game Of Tour Tonight
South Alabama basketball got a head start on the season this week as they began their Canadian exhibition tour.
The Jags first game was against Windsor in Ontario, Canada. It took a big fourth-quarter rally in order for the Jags to send the game into overtime. But the Jags were outscored 8-6 in the overtime period to fall 82-80.
Junior Augustine Rubit led all players with 27 points and 11 rebounds for a double-double. Mychal Ammons also had a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds. Seniors Javier Carter and Freddie Goldstein scored in double digits with 17 and 11 respectively.
“I thought we came out and played good early in the first four or five minutes but we let them get too far ahead,” said Jaguar Men’s head basketball coach Ronnie Arrow. “We had a great comeback but we just couldn’t finish it out. Hopefully we learned from it, which is what this is all about. Naturally we want to win, but I think this did us some good. We saw some things that we need to work on. Tomorrow night we’ll start a completely different bunch—we’ll probably play the two new inside guys a lot more than the ones back from last year and give them a chance to get some minutes.”
“We shot 38 percent (from the floor) in the first half, that was the start of it, and then we didn’t guard on top of it and that’s how we got down so much,” Arrow said.
The Jags entered the fourth quarter trailing 60-46 as the Jags were outpaced 26-17 in the third quarter.
Tuesday night the Jags took on Western (Ontario) University in London, Ontario, Canada. The Jags busted the game wide open with a 21-2 run in the third quarter as they ran away with a 68-47 win.
South Alabama was led by senior Xavier Roberson who scored a game-high 15 points off the bench. He shot 6-for-9 from the floor and 2-for4 from three point range and added three assists. Junior Augustine Rubit also came off the bench to add 11 points and two steals.
Coach Arrow started a completely different starting lineup from Monday nights loss. The new lineup came out of the gates quickly with a 5-1 run and used a 16-3 run to build a 21-11 lead by the end of the first quarter. Western got within five points in the second quarter but the Jags tightened up the defense. Western missed their first five shots of the second half and went 1-for-14 from the floor with six turnovers in the third quarter.
“I thought tonight we really got out and played hard,” said Jaguar Men’s head basketball coach Ronnie Arrow. “We had some guys that were hurt last night and didn’t play and they really helped us tonight. I thought our defense really helped us score.”
“Our effort defensively tonight was good,” he continued. “We practice that good defense leads to offense. I was telling our guys that I hope they understand that tonight because I thought this team had some good shooters and were quicker overall, and we used that defense tonight to take out some good shooters out of their range.”
The Jags will close out their trip won Thursday night at 6pm CDT.