When a second half comeback falls short, you still pick up the loss but it often becomes a moral victory.
After trailing by 17 at halftime and by as much as 22, the Binghamton University men’s basketball team rallied in the second half but came up short to Marshall University, 69-55 in a non-conference game Monday night at the Events Center.
The Bearcats went on a 20-6 run to start the second half and cut the deficit to 43-40 with 11:52 left in regulation. Freshman guard Dylan Talley sparked the rally with five points and a block. The Thundering Herd responded to the rally by hitting seven of their next 11 shots, including 3-pointers by Darryl Merthie and Hassan Whiteside that pushed the lead to 10, 63-53 with four minutes to play.
“We fought hard in the second half,” junior guard Moussa Camara said. “We played hard, and we came back into the game.”
Binghamton missed their final four shots of the game, and had a crucial turnover in the final minutes to close the game; six missed free throws in the second half proved to do in the Bearcats as well.
The Bearcats started the game 2-11 from the floor, with 9 turnovers en route to an early 26-8 deficit. Binghamton would finish with 14 first-half turnovers, and 19 for the game. Marshall rode 52 percent shooting in the first half, to take the 17 point lead into halftime.
“I told [my team] at halftime, I didn’t care what the score was, it was gonna be a grind,” Marshall head coach Donnie Jones said. “We were gonna have to win it at the end, we just continued to try to execute and get stops.”
The Thundering Herd shot 52 percent for the game and were led senior Tyler Wilkerson, who had 19 points and five rebounds in the win. Marshall freshman 7-foot Hassan Whiteside, who is second in the nation with 4.3 blocks per game, tallied five more blocks with 12 points and five rebounds. Whiteside hit a game changing 3-pointer with 4:10 left in regulation that put the Thundering Herd up 10.
“When a 7-footer shoots a 3-pointer, you got to take your hat off to them,” Binghamton interim head coach Mark Macon said. “It hurt but I’ll take that any day.”
A crowd of 2,945 fans showed up for the weeknight contest, and carried an electric atmosphere, especially during BU’s dramatic run.
“That was really good,” Camara said on the crowd’s energy. “They supported us when we came back. It was really nice of them.”
Despite being down big in the first half, junior Chretien Lukusa, who scored 12 points and grabbed seven boards, was vocal on the court during the deficit.
“I was just trying to motivate our guys, telling them there was a lot of basketball left,” Lukusa said. “Our crowd was supporting us and we didn’t want to let them down, so we kept pushing.”
Even Marshall noticed the energy of the building and didn’t take an inexperienced Binghamton squad lightly.
“What a great atmosphere here at Binghamton, great crowd, great arena,” Jones said. “My hat goes off to Mark Macon and the job he’s doing with this basketball team. They’re going through adversity and I was impressed with the way this team competes; they didn’t quit and took us all the way down to the wire.”
Contrary to their most recent games, where the Bearcats held leads through most of the games, the Bearcats had a lackluster first half that proved to be their downfall.
“We can’t wait to get down,” Lukusa said. “We got to make the first move, make the first punch and not take the first punch.”
The Bearcats shot 3 for 13 from downtown in the first half, while taking just nine shots inside the arc; this compared to Marshall’s 4-9 from 3-point range.
“We want guys to shoot shots, but we also want them to attack,” Macon said. “Being lax wasn’t [our] offense, it was defensively. They were scoring points and we weren’t. I thrive on defense; our defense creates our offense.”
The Bearcats concluded their fall semester home schedule, and look to several weeks of road play. They won’t return to the Events Center until Jan. 2, when La Salle comes to town.
Binghamton heads to Des Moines, Iowa for the Drake Challenge this weekend. They play the host Drake Bulldogs on Saturday at 6 p.m. Binghamton then faces South Dakota on Sunday at noon.
“It was just good to be at home and [enjoy] the support by our classmates and student body,” Lukusa said. “It helped us with our momentum; we just got to try to execute what we did at home and take it on the road.”