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Wednesday, January 2, 2002
Western Kentucky battles
cold shooting before coming away with a 65-54 win
 erek
Robinson scored a team-high 14 points and grabbed a career-high
15 rebounds as Western Kentucky defeated Florida International,
65-54, in a Sun Belt Conference men's basketball game Wednesday
in Miami.
Todor Pandov scored 13 points for the Hilltoppers and
Mike Wells came off the bench with 12 points and seven
boards.
With the win, WKU raised its record to 11-3 on the season,
2-1 in league play. FIU, losing for the eighth time in its last
10 tries, fell to 6-9, 0-2 in the Sun Belt.
FIU's Carlos
Morban led all scorers with 17 points and seven rebounds
while Taurance
Johnson collected a career-high 11 rebounds and made
five steals. Fab
Fisher came off the bench and scored 10 points--his third-consecutive
outing of double-digit offense
After Robinson scored the first points of the game on a 3-pointer
47 seconds into the contest, WKU went ice cold from the floor,
missing their next 16 shots in a row. Meanwhile, FIU was building
a 16-7 lead on a Fisher bucket with 7:02 to play in the half.
But fouls began to mount on the Golden Panthers with three
starters picking up two each and the Hilltoppers offense started
to find the range, taking an 18-17 lead on a 3-pointer by Patrick
Sparks with 2:57 to go and, finishing the half on a 20-6
run, led at the break, 23-17.
WKU stayed on top the entire second half. Three times, FIU
closed to within three points, the last time at 32-29 with 14:31
to play on a Nik
Novakovic layup. But each time the Hilltoppers responded
and built back its advantage to as many as 13 points on four
occasions, in the final three minutes of the game.
After shooting just 23.3 percent from the field in the first
half, WKU shot 54.5 percent (12 of 22) in the second. FIU didn't
fair any better, shooting 22.6 percent from the field in the
first half and just 31.9 percent (22 of 69) overall.
The Golden Panthers failed to help themselves at the free
throw line either, connecting on just seven of 16 (.438) attempts
from the charity stripe.
Despite those numbers FIU head coach Donnie
Marsh was pleased with his team's efforts.
"We went toe-to-toe with a very good team that has been
picked to win our league and with the exception of a couple of
blips late in the first half when we had a bunch of guy we rely
on sitting on the bench with fouls, I thought our kids competed
hard.
"That's what we wanted to see, coming back after a less-than-competitive
performance last Sunday against Arkansas-Little Rock."
The Golden Panthers close out this current homestand on Saturday,
Jan. 5 against SBC rival Middle Tennessee beginning at 7:30 p.m. |