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Saturday's men's basketball roundup
SAM - The Samford men's basketball team started the second half of Southern Conference play today on the road at The Citadel. Samford completed the season sweep as they came away with an 83-58 win. The victory moves the Bulldog's record to 18-5 overall and 8-2 in SoCon play while The Citadel falls to 5-16.
The Samford Bulldogs jumped all over their hosts early on, getting out to a 10-2 lead with their pressure defense that forced two ten-second counts in the opening minutes. Offensively, the Dogs were efficient from the floor going 17-of-28 overall and 10-of-20 from deep as they feasted from behind the line in the opening 20 minutes of play.
CIT - The Citadel basketball team trailed by just four midway through the first half but a 16-3 Samford run opened up an 18-point margin at the break as the Bulldogs fell at home on Saturday afternoon.
Christian Moore set career-highs in points (19) and 3-pointers (5) while Sola Adebisi broke his career-high with 19 points to go along with nine boards.
UTC - The Chattanooga Mocs men's basketball team earned its third-straight victory after battling back in an eventual 93-84 win over Mercer during crucial Southern Conference action in front of a rowdy 3,551 McKenzie Arena fans on Saturday.
For the fourth time in league play this season, Chattanooga (15-8, 7-3 SoCon) erased an early first-half hole with a strong second-half performance to come away victorious against Mercer (11-12, 4-6 SoCon). The Mocs trailed by as many as 12 (46-34) with 2:30 left in the first half before outscoring the visitors 52-36 in the second half.
MER - Four Bears scored in double figures led by Ahmad Robinson's 19 points, but the Mercer Bears fell on the road to Chattanooga, 93-84 Saturday afternoon from McKenzie Arena.
The Bears came out hot offensively in the first half, scoring 48 points while shooting 19-for-30 (63.3%) from the field and 6-for-11 (54.5%) from three-point range. Mercer controlled the game in the paint, as the Bears outrebounded Chattanooga 42-36 led by Marcus Overstreet's 11 boards and paint points were 36-24, Mercer.
VMI 80, Western Carolina 76 (OT)
VMI - VMI Basketball starts off the month of February strong by picking up an 80-76 overtime victory over Western Carolina on Saturday at the Ramsey Center.
The Keydets (11-12, 5-5 SoCon) have won five of their last six league games including back-to-back road victories in the Carolinas this week. With the win, this marks the first triumph in Cullowhee since February 2020 and the first overtime victory of the season. The last time VMI won two straight conference games on the road occurred during the 2014-15 season - VMI's first year back in the SoCon - when the Keydets took down The Citadel and Western Carolina in consecutive games in mid-February that season.
WCU - Marcus Kell capped Western Carolina's 13-point second-half comeback, handing the Catamounts a two-point lead at 71-69 with a layup with 70 seconds remaining in Saturday afternoon's Southern Conference rematch with VMI on Ingles Court at the Ramsey Center. However, including a game-tying deuce that forced overtime, the Keydets scored 11 of the game's final 16 points as VMI escaped with an 80-76 league win.
The Catamounts clawed back to knot the score at 69 with just under two minutes remaining in regulation before Kell's layup on a feed from Ice Emery handed the Catamounts a two-point lead with 1:10 showing on the game clock. Just 22 seconds later, Augustinas Kiudulas tied the game with neither squad able to find the bottom of the basket before the final horn.
WOF - The Wofford men's basketball team (12-11, 6-4) used a strong defensive effort to take down the UNCG Spartans (14-9, 7-3) at First Horizon Coliseum on Saturday evening by a 74-62 margin. The Terriers had an eight-point advantage at the half and then used a 20-2 run early in the second half to build a lead that the Spartans could not overcome.
The Terriers limited the Spartans to 39 percent shooting from the field en route to the team's first win in Greensboro since 2021. Wofford shot 63.2 percent from three, the best output from deep against a Division I opponent since the team shot 81 percent (17-21) against VMI in 2016.
UNCG - The UNC Greensboro (UNCG) men's basketball team fell 74-62 while hosting the Wofford Terriers in The Southern Conference (SoCon) action on Saturday evening at First Horizon Coliseum.
Ronald Polite III paced the Spartans with 18 points and three shots made from beyond the arc. Donovan Atwell and Jalen Breath tied for second on the team with 10 points each. Breath led the team with 17 boards, including 12 defensive and five offensive rebounds.