Update: Garcia leads Golden Flashes past Western Michigan
Kent State’s men’s basketball team finally managed to win a Mid-American Conference home game as a solid favorite Tuesday night.
Calling it routine may be a stretch, but the Golden Flashes (10-9, 5-4 MAC) were in control the whole way while earning a 75-64 triumph over a Western Michigan squad that remains winless in MAC play this season. The Flashes had been upset by lower-tier conference foes Central Michigan and Northern Illinois at home earlier this season.
Kent State had to withstand a spirited second-half rally by the Broncos (4-15, 0-8), who trailed by 20 in the first half and by 17 at halftime but cut their deficit to six with seven minutes remaining. The Flashes restored order down the stretch, holding Western Michigan without a field goal from the 5:22 mark until the game was in hand with just over a minute to play.
Grad transfer guard Andrew Garcia scored a Kent State career-high 18 points, shooting 7-of-10 from the field. Garcia missed the last game after receiving an injection in his knee, but looked healthy while scoring 12 points in the first half alone.
Junior guard Sincere Carry scored 14 points, while junior guard Malique Jacobs approached a triple-double with 11 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Jacobs spent most of the night guarding Broncos All-MAC sophomore guard B. Artis White, who scored just six points.
"Every game when I play great on defense it turns into offense, so that’s what I've been emphasizing," said Jacobs. "Play great on defense, be the engine of the team, and just let the game come to me."
Redshirt freshman forward VonCameron Davis scored a career-high 11 points, and senior forward Justyn Hamilton just missed a double-double of his own with 10 points and nine boards for the Flashes.
Junior guard Lamar Norman Jr., who played with Carry at Duquesne the past three seasons, scored a game-high 22 points for Western Michigan. Sophomore forward Markeese Hastings notched a deep double-double for the Broncos with 14 points and 14 rebounds.
The Flashes posted their highest total for a half in a MAC game this season, scoring 47 points – four less than they scored in the entire last game at Buffalo – and led by 17 at the intermission. The offense bogged down in the second half, but Kent State leaned on its league-leading defense down the stretch to hand Western Michigan its ninth straight defeat.
"The first half is a half we’ve been waiting on for awhile," said KSU head coach Rob Senderoff. "Our defense was good, we were making shots, moving the basketball, getting out in transition. In the second half we weren’t quite as crisp. We're still a work in progress. Hopefully at some point we’ll be able to duplicate that first half for two halves. But tonight when it got a little bit tight we got stops, we got offensive rebounds from Justyn and Malique, got a big 3 from (Carry). We made the plays we needed to make to win the game."
The Flashes will visit Bowling Green (11-9, 4-5) on Saturday.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Kent State defeated Western Michigan 75-64 on Tuesday.
