Final Boxscore (pdf)JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The North Florida basketball team used a strong first half defensive performance and balanced scoring in posting an 80-70 victory over Austin Peay, Wednesday night at UNF Arena.
The win extended the Ospreys (9-4) current home win streak to 13 games and also marked a program best ninth non-conference victory for the season. The "Birds of Trey" also connected on 13 three-pointers in the game, marking the seventh consecutive contest that UNF has posted a double-digit trey total.
Chris Davenport finished with 18 points in leading a group of five Ospreys in double figures.
Trent Mackey, who connected on five three-pointers, added 15 followed by
Beau Beech with 15,
Dallas Moore 12 and
Demarcus Daniels with 10. Davenport and Beech shared team honors with eight rebounds while Moore handed out eight of the squad's 19 assists. Daniels collected four blocked shots and moved to within seven of UNF's all-time mark of 145.
Austin Peay slipped to 4-7 after dropping back-to-back road games. The Governors were led by Chris Horton's 28 point, 17 rebound double-double effort. Horten, who leads the nation in offensive rebounds, pulled down 10 in the game.
"We played a really great first half of basketball," said head coach
Matthew Driscoll. "I felt defensively we just got stop after stop even though we struggled shooting the ball, especially from the arc, early in the game. I was proud of the effort the guys played with despite not making some shots. We lost some intensity over the final 10 minutes and that's my fault, I should have switched things up defensively because our guys were looking sluggish and we ended up letting Austin Peay get back into the game with some threes."
Playing their third game in five days, North Florida made just 4 of 19 three-point attempts in the first half before connecting on 9 of 19 tries in the second half. The Ospreys were also hindered by 14 turnovers including several unforced errors. UNF maintained control of the game on the defensive end however, limiting the Govs to just 30 percent shooting in the first half including an 0-7 performance from long distance.
UNF led for much of the opening period and used a 13-4 surge over the closing five minutes of play to carry a 41-24 lead into the halftime break.
The Ospreys scored the first five points of the second half to push their lead over 20 and led by as many as 23 before seeing APSU trimmed the final margin to 10 by scoring the final nine points of the contest.
North Florida concludes its current four-game home stand Saturday against in-state foe Florida A&M and 7 p.m.
