Brescia men's basketball looking for consistency early
Nov. 14—Brescia University has been looking for consistency early in its men's basketball season.
Brescia was 1-1 heading into a Sunday exhibition matchup at Western Carolina on Sunday. Brescia has lost exhibitions against IUPU Indianapolis, Murray State and Middle Tennessee, all on the road and against NCAA Division 1 competition.
"Playing the D-1s, the guys love it," Brescia men's coach Sarah Gayler said. "They get a big arena experience, they're on TV, people can see them play. Basketball wise, halftime at Murray we were down 12, and we told the team they're really good and going to go on runs, we have to learn to contain that and convert. We scheduled six exhibitions, we've got three more, each one we're getting better. Middle Tennessee in spurts we played pretty good.
Brescia was at Western Carolina, and will also play Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee State. Brescia has two NAIA games in the River States Conference this week, at Indiana Southeast on Tuesday, then back at the Moore Center to host Midway on Saturday.
The Brescia men's basketball team came up big with a 85-71 win in its season opener at Lindsey Wilson recently.
Brescia closed the first half on a 22-1 run over the final seven minutes. The scoring drought from the Blue Raiders proved to be too much to overcome during the second half.
Brescia finished the game with four players scoring in double figures, including Nevin Graves who shot 5-of-8 from the 3-point range on the way to a team-high 20 points.
Mike Caswell and Tay Smith had 17 points each.
Perhaps the most impressive performance in that game came from Carrieun Mathis, who had a double-double 12 points and 16 rebounds. Mathis is a 6-foot-7 sophomore.
"A lot of it was my teammates playing good defense and we converted that to shots and rebounds," Mathis said. "It was definitely surprising seeing my numbers. We will score a lot in transition. A lot of us can get it and go."
Graves scored 17 points to lead Brescia in a 71-64 loss to Bethel (Tenn.) last week at the Moore Center. Freshman Javion Johnson scored 13 points and got to the free throw line to make 7-of-10. John Saenz scored 11 points for Brescia.
Smith, a sophomore out of Warren Central, averaged 17 points a game last season, when Brescia finished 7-22.
BRESCIA WOMEN
Brescia was 0-4 heading into a Tuesday game at Indiana University Southeast.
Lindsey Peyton had a double-double with 14 points, 10 rebounds in an 85-70 loss at Bethel (Tenn.).
Marquia White scored 11 points for Brescia and Alexis Williams added 10 in the game.
Michael Gray is in his sixth season as head coach of the Brescia women's program.
