ODU serves Herd season sweep
Marshall men’s basketball couldn’t battle back from Old Dominion’s 21 second-chance points in a nail-biting conference showdown, dropping an 84-79 decision to the Monarchs Thursday night at the Cam Henderson Center.
“The physicality got to us,” junior guard Jon Elmore said. “We have to get more physical, rebound better. We can’t give up that many second chance points if we want to win.”
Marshall had two second-chance points, compared to ODU’s 21. The Monarchs also scored 22 points off Marshall’s 19 turnovers and took 17 more total shots than the Herd.
“It’s hard to win a game when a team outshoots you by that many,” Elmore said. “We scored a lot of points. We got a lot of good looks”
“The biggest part of the game was they shot 72 (shots) and we shot 55 (shots), and that’s second chance points and turnovers,” head coach Dan D’Antoni said.
Elmore shot 0-for-5 from behind the arc, but put up a double-double—scoring 24 points and collecting a team high 11 assists. Junior guard C.J. Burks scored 24 points of his own, and junior forward Ajdin Penava had 14 points and 10 rebounds and five blocks. Penava’s season block total is now 119.
ODU’s starting five all finished in double-figures scoring. Redshirt senior Brandan Stith led the Monarchs in both scoring and rebounds with 21 points and 12 rebounds. Senior guard Randy Haynes finished with 20 points, junior guard Ahmad Caver added 18, redshirt junior forward Trey Porter had 11, and redshirt junior guard B.J. Stith scored 10.
“(ODU) played at a very high level, and can shoot the ball extremely well,” D’Antoni said.
“I don’t want to say (we’re) careless with the ball, because we’re just making reads,” Elmore said. “I think we just need to be a little bit more crisp.”
“They’re pretty good defensively,” D’Antoni said. “I think we just had misreads. Some of them misreads, a couple of them careless.”
The Herd cut ODU’s lead to one point with 1:02 left to play in the game, but couldn’t convert or get a stop defensively.
“It seemed like they were scoring every time down the stretch, every time we needed a crucial stop,” Elmore said. “They made a tough bucket and we gave up an opportunity. Just going to have to go back to the drawing board and learn from it.”
Marshall returns to The Cam Saturday night at 7 p.m., as the Herd honors seniors Milan Mijovic, Ot Elmore and Marcus Reed prior to tip-off.
Courtney Andrews can be contacted at [email protected].
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