JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 West Georgia men’s basketball made history by winning its first-ever ASUN Tournament game, 93-85, over the North Florida Ospreys in Swisher Gymnasium.<\/p>\n
The Wolves are set to take on Queens Friday, March 6 at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in the ASUN Quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Capitalizing on 60 percent shooting while also dominating the glass, UWG (15-16, 9-10 ASUN) created a 20-point lead over UNF (7-25, 5-14 ASUN) early in the second period, but the Wolves weren’t out of the woods yet.<\/p>\n
Going on a cold spell, the Ospreys stormed back to make it a four-point game late. In the final three minutes, North Florida forced the Pack to win at the free throw line by fouling on every UWG possession. With a host of Wolves sent to the charity stripe, UWG knocked down its foul shots to ultimately outlast the Ospreys’ comeback.<\/p>\n
Forward Shelton Williams-Dryden led the Wolves with 27 points and 13 rebounds on 81 percent shooting. Fueled by four three-pointers and 7-for-7 free throw shooting, guard Josh Smith dropped 25 points on a 50 percent field goal clip.<\/p>\n
Playing in their first-ever ASUN Tournament game, the Wolves opened with guard Malcolm Noel and Williams-Dryden attacking from inside the paint to put the Pack up early.<\/p>\n
Even with the Ospreys capitalizing at the charity stripe, back-to-back threes from guards Josh Smith and Brady Hardewig pushed the Wolves to a 17-10 advantage by the first media timeout.<\/p>\n
Over the next four minutes, UWG extended its lead to 27-17 thanks to a smothering and physical defense that gave UNF early trouble.<\/p>\n
Capitalizing on a handful of turnovers by the Wolves, North Florida cut the Pack’s lead to a pair of possessions, but the hot-handed Smith would respond with two more made shots from beyond the arc to reestablish a double-digit advantage before the final media break.<\/p>\n
Despite the Wolves committing seven turnovers, combined with UNF winning the free throw battle by 11, UWG went into halftime holding a 48-35 lead. Smith’s 14 points pushed the pace for the Pack in the opening half.<\/p>\n
Before North Florida knew what hit them, Noel knocked down a three-pointer and Williams-Dryden added four more points to his impressive total to put UWG up by 20 early in the second period.<\/p>\n
Coming out of the first media timeout of the half, West Georgia missed a handful of three-pointers in a row, which allowed UNF to go on a five-point run.<\/p>\n
UWG quickly recovered thanks to Williams-Dryden staying red-hot from inside the arc. With under 12 minutes to go, the Wolves found themselves up 67-52 in front of a packed house of UNF fans.<\/p>\n
Another costly cold spell by UWG allowed the Ospreys to slowly chip away at the Wolves’ double-digit lead. At the six-minute mark, West Georgia held a 72-63 edge.<\/p>\n
The two teams traded basket-for-basket over the next few minutes, resulting in UWG holding a 79-72 lead with under three minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
In the final three minutes, UNF sent the Wolves to the free throw line in every possession.<\/p>\n
Being sent to the line, Smith, Noel, forward JaVar Daniel and guard Matija \u017du\u017ei\u0107 knocked down enough of its charity stripe shots to hold on and beat UNF.<\/p>\n
The win advances the Wolves to the ASUN Tournament Quarterfinals against Queens. Tipoff from the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena is set for 7:30 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 West Georgia men’s basketball made history by winning its first-ever ASUN Tournament game, 93-85, over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-180794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180794","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=180794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}