To close its 2025 season, the FGCU men\u2019s basketball team snapped a five-game losing streak with an 84-43 victory against NCCAA program Fort Lauderdale on Sunday at Alico Arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n
FGCU overcame another slow first half. After connecting on their first two shots to open the game, the Eagles missed their next six shot attempts, which came from around the arc. The scoring drought put FGCU behind 12-7 four minutes into the game, as Ft Lauderdale opened the game shooting an efficient 5-of-8 from the field.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the 11th-minute mark that FGCU took a 14-12 lead, thanks to a second-chance layup by forward Isaiah Malone. His score was part of a 10-0 run that gave the Eagles a 17-12 lead.<\/p>\n
Despite a poor shooting half where they went 11-of-34 from the field and 4-of-20 on threes, FGCU managed to close the first half on a 17-6 run, going into halftime with a 34-21 lead. Forwards Rory Stewart and Malone were the leading scorers for FGCU at the break with 7 and 9 points, respectively.<\/p>\n
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\u201c[I have to] give Ft. Lauderdale credit in the first half,\u201d head coach Pat Chambers said. \u201cThey mixed up their defenses. They were playing some junk [style of defense] and it had us off-kilter a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a different story to begin the second half.<\/p>\n
After a strong opening 20 minutes, Malone picked up where he left off and made an immediate impact in the second half. The 6-foot-9 forward added two second-chance scores and one impressive alley-oop dunk. He recorded his third double-double of the season with 15 points and 14 rebounds. Malone also made his presence felt on the defensive end, swatting away six shots.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Malone] played with incredible energy and incredible enthusiasm,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cHe was all over the floor, blocking shots, diving for loose balls, diving for 50-50s \u2026 maybe this is a springboard into something pretty special heading into ASUN play.\u201d<\/p>\n
FGCU maintained its groove on both ends of the floor and went on a 16-0 run halfway through the half.<\/p>\n
Guard Rahmir Barno scored nine points on 4-of-6 shooting to go with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. And despite scoring below his average of 13.3 points per game, Chambers still praised Barno for his positive impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could have taken way more shots and he didn\u2019t. He was trying to get guys involved and he played great defense,\u201d Chambers said.<\/p>\n
Barno\u2019s quarterbacking of the team late in the first half enabled FGCU to control the game the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat first half wasn\u2019t our best,\u201d Barno said. \u201cEvery huddle, we were just preaching, \u2018come on, let\u2019s get it together. Let\u2019s try to meet our standard,\u2019 and eventually we did. We were shot out of a cannon the second half and just kind of blew it open.\u201d<\/p>\n
FGCU outscored Ft. Lauderdale 50-22 in the second half. The Eagles had a similar advantage on the glass, outrebounding their opponents 54-23 and shot a much-improved 21-of-37 from the field that included 6-of-17 from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
With the conclusion of their nonconference slate, the Eagles now sit at 6-7 and start ASUN conference play against Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas, on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To close its 2025 season, the FGCU men\u2019s basketball team snapped a five-game losing streak with an 84-43…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":{"0":"post-100124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-fort-lauderdale","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}