PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Thomas Dowd finished with 23 points and 13 rebounds, and regular-season champion Troy ended the five-day run of No. 10 seed Georgia Southern with a 77-61 victory in the championship game of the Sun Belt Conference tournament on Monday night.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Tayton Conerway, the Sun Belt Conference player of the year, scored 16 of his 21 points in the second half, Myles Rigsby added 20 points and No. 3 seed Troy beat fourth-seeded Arkansas State 94-81 on Monday night to clinch Troy basketballa spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017.
Troy basketball (23-10) won the Sun Belt Conference Tournament championship to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in program history.
Arkansas State (24-10) was in the championship game for the second year in a row, battling for its first NCAA berth since 1999 and second in school history.
Troy trailed 66-58 with 10 minutes to go before going on 24-4 run, sparked by Conerway’s 12 points, to go ahead 82-70 with 2:12 left. It was the first double-digit lead of the game.
The Trojans made seven straight shots at the end of the run, while Arkansas State went 2 of 13 from the field over eight minutes.
Troy shot 65% from the field in the second half, getting 16 points from Rigsby and 11 from Thomas Dowd.
Dowd finished with 14 points and nine rebounds, and Jackson Fields added 10 points for Troy, which won its sixth straight game.
Dyondre Dominguez led Arkansas State with 19 points and Derrian Ford added 17. Terrance Ford Jr. had 11 points and seven assists, and Kobe Julien and Joseph Pinion each scored 10.
Conerway finished the tournament with 61 points after scoring 18 in quarterfinals against Old Dominion and 22 in semifinals versus No. 2 seed James Madison. He was 8 of 17 from the field against the Red Wolves.
The old adage of "a tale of two halves" in a basketball game usually carries some sort of conotation.
That saying implies a team might've had a rough first half, finding itself down and out. Then, said team comes back to life in the second frame, erasing any deficit, and is victorious against its opponent.
But for the James Madison University men's basketball team, only one thing is certain: the Dukes were never going to lose that game. Though, it still was two different halves for James Madison, showing off some of its star-studded talent as well as a deep bench.
The Dukes ran by Arkansas State, 91-71, in the Sun Belt Men's Basketball Championship on Monday at the Pensacola Bay Center, punching James Madison's automatic ticket to the NCAA Tournament. James Madison will learn its seed and opponent come Sunday during the Selection Show.
"When I took over the job, I didn’t know when, where or at what point. But I knew we were going to get it. It takes a special group like this to finish the deal," James Madison head coach Mark Byington said. "Just a great tournament. I’m more excited to take these guys to the next one. We don’t have to wait until Selection Sunday to see if we’re in. We know we’re in. And we’re dancing.”
The first half saw James Madison's Xavier Brown take over the game. He scored 21 of the Dukes' 42 first-half points, and Arkansas State still was hanging around a bit. James Madison took a 10-point lead into halftime.
A 3-pointer from Noah Freidel followed by a jump shot from Terrence Edwards seemed to throw Arkansas State out of rhythm. That's when the Dukes pounced, going on small bursts to coast to victory.
It was in the second frame where James Madison's depth came alive, and several players contributed.
"I thought we were playing basketball the right way. We were finding the guy who was hot in the first half. The second half, we had more assists. Noah made a shot in the second half and got us going," Byington said. "We started rolling after that. If you would’ve heard our guys in the huddle, it was a player-led team today. Their voices were strong and positive with belief in each other. There was no way we were going to let this game get away tonight. There was absolutely no way possible. We were going to win, no matter what.”
James Madison is now riding a 13-game win streak into the NCAA Tournament. However, it's not the longest of their season. The Dukes started the year off with a 14-game win streak.
Either way, James Madison is heading to the national stage with some confidence, having not lost since a tight 82-76 loss to App State on Jan 27.
“I felt like people forgot about us. We were on an incredible win streak, and we weren’t fading. We were battling and everything else. I knew we would take care of business down here," Byington said. "This was their mission. They were solely focused on this tournament. It’s not like we were asking for respect. But you can stamp it on us now."
This story will be updated.
Ben Grieco is a sports reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He can be reached on X (@BenGriecoSports) and via email at BGrieco@gannett.com.
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Themus Fulks scored a career-high 23 points, Jordan Brown had 13 points and 16 rebounds and second-seeded Louisiana beat No. 8 seed South Alabama 71-66 on Monday night to claim the Sun Belt Conference tournament championship.
Louisiana (26-7) secured its 11th NCAA tournament berth and first since 2014.
Louisiana's first lead of two points or more came with 12:06 remaining in the second half on a putback by Terence Lewis II for a 49-46 advantage.
After South Alabama went 1 of 2 from the free throw line, Jalen Dalcourt made a jumper in the lane with 27.7 seconds left to extend Louisiana's lead to 67-64. The Jaguars struggled all game from the stripe, going 17 of 28.
Isaiah Moore made two free throws with 17.1 seconds left to get South Alabama within 67-66, but Lewis answered with two makes at the other end to regain a three-point advantage. South Alabama guard Owen White had a long 3-pointer rattle out in the closing seconds, and Kentrell Garnett sealed it with two free throws at 1.4.
Dalcourt finished with 13 points and Lewis added 12 points for the Ragin' Cajuns. Dalcourt and Fulks each made three of Louisiana's eight 3-pointers.
South Alabama (19-16), which knocked off No. 1 seed Southern Miss 78-61 on Saturday, was going for its first NCAA tournament berth since 2008.
Moore scored a career-high 33 points for South Alabama. Kevin Samuel had two blocks in the first half to set a South Alabama single-season record with 86. Samuel also scored 12 points and grabbed six rebounds.
Moore, averaging 18.5 points per game, scored 13 of South Alabama's opening 20 points to help build a six-point lead. The Jaguars led 37-33 at halftime behind 63% shooting and Moore's 16 points.
TROY, Ala. – On the one-year anniversary of his first team meeting as Troy's head coach, Sun Belt Coach of the Year Jon Sumrall led his team to the 2022 Hercules Tires Sun Belt Conference Football Championship on his home field.
Troy scored on five of its first six drives, jumping out to a 31-0 advantage, and never trailed Saturday en route to claiming the league title. The Trojans earned a 45-26 win against Coastal Carolina on Saturday in front of 21,554 fans at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
“A year ago today is the first time I had a team meeting here in this room with the guys about the direction we were about to take this thing,” Sumrall said. “I wanted them to understand that things weren’t going to be the same and we were going to work harder than they’d ever worked. They bought in. We invest deeply in relationships with our players and care deeply about them.”
Troy (11-2) extended its win streak to 10 games. For the Trojans, it is their seventh all-time Sun Belt Football Championship and their third outright Sun Belt crown. Troy’s seventh all-time Sun Belt Football Championship marks the most by any program in league history.
“I’m really proud of our guys for their toughness through adversity,” Sumrall said. “This bunch has earned it. They’ve adjusted to a lot of new things and changes that were probably uncomfortable at first. I could not be more proud to be the head coach of the Troy Trojans.”
Troy’s 10-game winning streak – its longest at the FBS level – is the first for the Trojans since an 11-game spree in 1995. The streak began after the team started the season 1-2, including a heartbreaking 32-28 loss at App State on Sept. 17.
Troy’s junior quarterback Gunnar Watson was named the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship Game Most Valuable Player. He completed 12-of-17 passes for 318 yards with three touchdown strikes. It was his fifth career three touchdown performance.
“I think we had a really good plan for them,” Watson said. “It just seemed like everything was going right for us. I think when we came out the first drive and got a field goal, next drive we scored, momentum was on our side and we kept rolling with it.”
Wide receiver RaJae’ Johnson caught four passes for 134 yards with a pair of touchdowns. His 134 receiving yards marked a Sun Belt Football Championship Game record. Fellow receiver Deshon Stoudemire had three catches for 99 yards with a touchdown. Running back DK Billingsley rushed for three touchdowns on 57 total yards, moving him into 10th place in Troy school history for career rushing touchdowns.
Troy’s star linebacker Carlton Martial, the 2022 Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year, is the all-time leading tackler in NCAA FBS history. He finished with nine tackles on Saturday to give him Troy’s all-divisions school record for career tackles with 563.
“When I lay my head down on my pillow, I think I’ll be satisfied,” Martial said.
Coastal Carolina (9-3), which is 31-6 since the start of the 2020 campaign, lost back-to-back games for the first time since 2019.
“First of all, let’s congratulate Jon and his staff and his team,” Coastal Carolina head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “They’re champions; they’ve earned that. They’ve had a tremendous season and they came out and really took it to us from the opening drive. We could not respond at all there in the first half. I was proud of our team trying to come back there in the second half. I thought we showed a lot of effort, a lot of fight. I was disappointed in the outcome, but I’m not disappointed in this team.”
Chanticleers’ quarterback Grayson McCall, the three-time Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year who had not seen game action since being injured in his team’s Nov. 3 contest against App State, completed 29-of-41 passes for 319 yards with three touchdowns. He became Coastal’s all-time leader in career touchdowns responsible for and extended his streak to at least one touchdown pass in 23 consecutive games.
Troy opened the scoring with a field goal on the game’s opening drive, completing a nine-play, 57-yard series with a 35-yard field goal by Brooks Buce.
After forcing Coastal Carolina into a three-and-out in the next series, Troy’s Stoudemire hauled in a pass from Watson for a 65-yard score that gave the Trojans a 10-0 advantage.
On its third drive of the game, Troy’s Billingsley rushed for an eight-yard touchdown that completed a four-play, 62-yard drive. The Trojans led 17-0 after the first quarter.
Early in the second quarter, Billingsley ran in his second touchdown of the game with a 33-yard rush for score to extend Troy’s advantage to 24-0.
Less than three minutes later, Johnson snared a pass from Watson and ran it in 67 yards for the touchdown with 9:47 remaining in the second quarter. That marked the longest touchdown reception in Sun Belt Football Championship Game history and put the Trojans in front 31-0.
With 29 seconds remaining until halftime, Coastal Carolina put its first points on the board when McCall called his own number and ran eight yards for the touchdown.
Troy held a 31-7 advantage at intermission.
The Chanticleers scored quickly out of halftime as McCall found Jared Brown, the 2022 Sun Belt Freshman of the Year, down the middle for a 30-yard touchdown strike, but the two-point conversion effort failed.
Troy scored twice more in the third quarter, first when Johnson caught his second touchdown pass of the day, a 36-yard reception from Watson to put Troy ahead 38-13.
On the next series, McCall fumbled for Coastal Carolina and Troy recovered on its own seven-yard line. Eight plays later, Billingsley rushed up the middle for a three-yard touchdown – his third of the day. That gave the Trojans a 45-13 advantage entering the fourth quarter.
McCall threw for a pair of scores in the fourth quarter to make the final 45-26 margin. The first was an 11-yard toss to Sam Pinckney and the second was a 21-yard reception by Tyson Mobley.
NOTABLES
• The all-time series between Coastal Carolina and Troy is now tied 3-3. The Chanticleers had won three consecutive meetings in the series before Saturday’s win by the Trojans.
• The home team is undefeated in the Sun Belt Football Championship with the host institution winning each of the four Sun Belt Football Championship Games.
• The match-up between Coastal Carolina and Troy marked the only conference football championship game in the nation that featured both teams with two-or-fewer losses.
• Troy’s 7-0 record at home ties the school record for best home record with the 1996 squad.
• Troy set a season attendance record with an average of 25,661 fans per contest. The Trojans set the school single-game attendance record against Army on Nov. 12 with 31,010 fans.
• Troy has won 57 games since the start of the 2016 season, which ranks tied for 21st-most in the nation and during that time and seventh most among non-autonomy conferences.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Corey Allen scored 29 points and third-seeded Georgia State won the Sun Belt Conference tournament for the fourth time in eight years, defeating Louisiana 80-71 on Monday night.
Eliel Nsoseme had 12 points and 13 rebounds for Georgia State. Jalen Thomas scored 12 points and Kane Williams added 10. The third-seeded Panthers have won 10 straight games and 12 of their last 13.
After Georgia State saw a comfortable lead cut to three at 55-52 with 7:28 remaining, Nsoseme converted a three-point play, Allen made two free throws followed by a 3-pointer and the Panthers were well on their way to an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Louisiana sent Georgia State to the free-throw line on seven consecutive possessions beginning at the 2:15 mark and the Panthers made the last 12 of 13 attempts in that stretch. The Panthers made 22 of 24 free throws for the game.
Jordan Brown had 24 points and eight rebounds for eighth-seeded Louisiana. Greg Williams Jr. scored 15 points and Jalen Dalcourt 10. The Ragin’ Cajuns defeated No. 9 UT Arlington, No. 1 Texas State and No. 4 Troy to reach the championship game. Louisiana is the first team seeded eighth or worse to reach the Sun Belt tournament championship game.
Georgia State built a 21-12 lead with 11:48 remaining in the first half and led by 7-11 points for nearly all of the next 22 minutes of play. Georgia State led 42-33 at halftime and while neither team managed to shoot as much as 35% in the first 12 minutes of the second half, Louisiana went on a 6-0 run to draw within three before Georgia State pulled away.
Ken Davis sat in his living room on Monday, watching Appalachian State on its way to a title.
The men’s basketball team clinched its first Sun Belt Conference championship, and more importantly, the first NCAA Tournament berth for the program in 21 years and only the third in the school’s history.
His phone started to buzz with 15 minutes remaining in the game, and he looked down to find himself in a group text. The starter of the chat? Bobby Cremins, the former Mountaineers head coach under whom Davis served as a student manager.
“You talk about memories flooding,” Davis, 64, said.
That was the case for many Mountaineers fans, from the moment App State beat Georgia State, 80-73, to cap a stretch of four wins in four days that included two overtime victories. The championship came after a regular season in which App State lost six of its last seven games.
Naturally, some fans harkened back to the school’s previous NCAA trips.
Cremins led App State to its first, a Southern Conference championship year during the 1978-79 season. Davis, who graduated from App State in 1980 and earned his master’s the following year, ultimately followed Cremins to Georgia Tech as a graduate assistant.
Davis said he looks at the game with a coach’s eye. And he said on that front, there’s no way the Mountaineers should be here. But he saw a team that played harder than their opponents, a trait that can carry a team at the right time. He drew similarities between Cremins’ team and this one. For starters, a short bench that leaned heavily on a few – for example, four players played 34 minutes or more in the Sun Belt title game – but it was also the way the team just wore down Georgia State.
““I relate what Coach (Dustin) Kerns is doing to what Coach Cremins did back in the ‘70s,” Davis said. “They have bought into his system. And when players buy into a system, and they believe in that coach and that system, they’re going to perform.
“So I would say, yeah, I’m surprised, but I’m not surprised because of how they reacted and adjusted to his system.”
Trevor Owens hopped into the App State fan base at the right time. A student from 1997 to 2003, he saw three 20-win seasons. He saw the program move from Varsity Gym, in the center of campus, to its current home at Holmes Convocation Center in 2000. That stretch hooked him.
“I just remember trying to keep my balance at Varsity Gym because those bleachers were rocking because they were so excited about their basketball team back in the day,” Owens, 41, said.
The App State program saw other bright spots, but for the better part of the 2010s, it remained stuck. The Mountaineers had one winning season during that stretch, a 16-15 season in 2010-11. Owens called the results and sparse crowds disappointing, especially with the intense passion he saw during his time at the university.
That changed with Kerns, hired in April 2019. He authored a winning season, 18-15, last year before this season’s 17-11 campaign. Two years of progress have helped a program overcome nearly a decade of struggles. And the season included struggles, too: a COVID-19 pause stopped the Mountaineers during conference play for two-plus weeks.
The team traveled back to Boone on Tuesday, welcomed back into by a socially distanced gathered. That followed a night on which fans took to King Street and celebrated. David Jackson said he could hear fireworks in his neighborhood the moment the game ended, lasting for roughly 20 minutes.
Jackson’s perspective on this moment is unique. The play-by-play voice of the Mountaineers from 2000 to 2016, he’s now the president/CEO of the Boone Chamber of Commerce.
This is going to bring national exposure to App State and Boone. And any positive attention, he said, is wonderful during a time where a pandemic is still ongoing.
But it’s also the next installment of special memories for a fan base. Students, those who celebrated in the streets last night and the fans that have populated home games, have a new high point. One that, like the other two berths in the Big Dance, will resonate.
“I remember everything — I’m serious,” Jackson said. “I remember everything because that’s what these moments do.
“They make you soak it all in and pay attention to little details because of the magnitude of it all.”
