Tampa, FLA --
The University of South Florida men’s basketball team has won their first game of the regular season, defeating Alabama A & M, 80-63 on Tuesday night. The Bulls never trailed in the first half, building up leads of as many as 15 points before leading by just three, 34-31 at the halftime break.
AAMU did hold a one point lead in the second half, less than four minutes into the half. USF regained the lead in less than a minute. The game remained competitive until the final seven minutes, when the Bulls built a double digit lead on a Micheal Durr dunk, 66-56. For the remainder of the game, they would lead by no less than ten points and by as many as 19 at one point.
Three players finished in double-digit scoring for the Bulls. Sophomore guard, David Collins, lead the team in scoring with 17 points. He was also 4-6 from the free throw line. Justin Brown trailed Collins with 16 points. Senior guard, T. J. Lang rounded out the top three with ten points.
What was more unusual for USF was the performance of LaQuincy Rideau, who finished with ten assists, which has been an area of weakness for the team over the past couple of years. In ten games last season, the Bulls had ten or less assists as a team. The most assists by any one player was by Geno Thorpe, who had nine against UConn on January 25th. Rideau also finished with eight points, narrowly missing a double-double.
The Bulls shot fairly well in the game, 57% from the field and 43% from beyond the arc. The also dominated the paint, outscoring AAMU 38-16 inside.
Although happy with the win, head basketball coach, Brian Gregory, noted several improvements need to be made.
“We did some good things,” said Gregory. “We didn’t lose our poise. Games are going to be tough. We’re just a work in progress when it comes to stuff. That zone impacted us early.”
Some of that stuff is turnovers. USF gave up the ball 20 times in the game.
“We score 80 points,” said Gregory, “and have 20 turnovers. That’s 20 empty possessions where we don’t get a shot.”
Against an inferior opponent, they were able to get out with a comfortable win. However, their next game is against a far better program, Austin Peay.
“Some good things and some things obviously over the next six days we got to really improve on and get better,” said Gregory. “The positive with everything was that there was no real panic, we didn’t lose our poise, we didn’t get out of sorts, we didn’t start launching a bunch of threes, which sometimes you see when a team goes to a zone.”
Gregory was asked about Rideau’s assists in the game and whether or not he could see flashes of something special in him.
“Well, you can see flashes,” Gregory said. “He needs to be more consistent in terms of taking care of the ball, too. But, you know, he’s a spark plug for us. Four steals. I saw glimpses of how good we can be with our full court pressure, but we can’t gamble.”
Something else that will need to be addressed going forward were technical fouls, of which the Bulls had three. Two of them were on Mayan Kiir. Gregory was asked what second technical foul was for.
“Taunting,” said Gregory. “I want our guys to be passionate and play with enthusiasm. We’re just not in a position to be doing any of that stuff, right now. You know what I mean?”
USF hosts Austin Peay on Monday, November 12. They went to the NCAA tournament, last season, their second trip in the past ten years. Tipoff is at 7 PM at the Yuengling Center.
