Late Rally Falls Short in #MBB Home Finale

Saturday, February 22

Jacksonville, Fla.

7 pm

University of North Florida

14-15, 8-8ASUN

ETSU

17-13, 10-7ASUN

ETSU

North Florida

2/22/2014 10:27:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

By: North Florida Athletics

Final Boxscore (pdf)
Game Book

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- For the 11th time in 16 Atlantic Sun Conference games this season, the North Florida basketball team had a game decided in the final minutes as visiting ETSU escaped with an 88-85 win Saturday night in the home finale for the Ospreys.

UNF (14-15, 8-8 ASun) rallied from a double-digit deficit early in the second half to earn a slight lead and several ties before the Buccaneers (17-13, 10-7) converted three free throws in the final 10 seconds to secure the win. With the loss, North Florida has all but been eliminated from hosting a quarterfinal game in the upcoming Atlantic Sun tournament.

Senior Travis Wallace, making his final appearance at UNF Arena, led the way for the Ospreys finishing with 19 points and eight rebounds. Freshman Dallas Moore made four three-pointers on his way to 18 points while Beau Beech added 11 and Chris Davenport chipped in 10.

ETSU saw five players reach double figures led by 19 from Jalen Riley, including a pair of free throws with three seconds to play. Hunter Harris and Rashawn Rembert each tallied 18 for the Bucs.

"Playing this many close games says a couple things about our team," said UNF head coach Matthew Driscoll. "First of all, I have to be extremely proud of our resiliency and determination to keep competing in games. Secondly, to have several of these tight ones shows that we have the ability to excecute plays down the stretch. I thought tonight we got exactly what we wanted in the closing seconds we just weren't able to convert the shot. Our focus is to finish the regular season strong as a lead in for the conference tournament."

The Ospreys got off to the quick start building as large as a seven-point advantage, 20-13, just over eight minutes into the game. After a three-pointer by Jalen Nesbitt with 9:16 to play, UNF held its largest lead of the game at 27-18. The Bucs answered with seven straight points and would eventually tie the game at 32 on a Lester Wilson trey with five minutes left in the half.

UNF would push the lead back to four before ETSU closed the half on a 15-2 surge for a 47-38 lead at the break. Riley was the spark during the Bucs run scoring seven of the points.

ETSU scored on its opening possession of the second half, but a more aggressive Osprey squad made a charge with a 10-2 run that evened the contest at 55, less than five minutes into the action. The squads would battle back-and-forth over the next five minutes until six quick points from Rembert put the Bucs back up by seven with 9 minutes to play.

Down by seven with eight minutes on the clock, UNF mounted an 8-2 spurt to close the deficit to one in just over two minutes of play. With only two minutes remaining, the Bucs again widened their lead to eight points only to see Wallace convert and old-fashioned three point play followed by a Beech trey and two more free throws from Wallace that knotted the score at 85 with 12 seconds left.

Riley appeared to lose the ball on a drive in the closing seconds but regained possession amidst a battle for the ball and drew a foul with three ticks left. After making both free throws, ETSU intercepted the Osprey's long inbounds pass and were fouled sending Kinard Gadsden-Gilliard to the line with 1.2 seconds on the clock. He made one of two attempts to put the Bucs up by three.

Following a UNF timeout, Davenport rifled a pass to Wallace at half court where he redirected it to Beech for a three-point attempt on which he was fouled with 0.3 seconds left.

North Florida will close out its regular season slate with a pair of road contests beginning Thursday at league-leading Mercer.