Agnew’s season-high not enough in SLU loss at Dayton

DAYTON, Ohio – The Southeastern Louisiana University men’s basketball team got a season best start from Christian Agnew, but the Lions couldn’t keep up with a hot-shooting Dayton team as the Flyers opened up a 12-point lead in the second half and a comeback attempt came up short in an 80-74 loss Saturday afternoon at the UD Arena.

After swapping buckets for the first few minutes, Alec Woodard gave the Lions their first lead of the game as his three-pointer with 14:45 left made it 7-6 Southeastern. A Boogie Anderson jumper made it 9-6 before a four-point possession by Dayton gave the Flyers the lead for a good portion of the remainder of the first half. Trailing 31-26 with less than five minutes left, Agnew and Matthew Strange went back-to-back on made three-pointers to give the Lions the lead at 32-31. After a Flyer three ball gave Dayton the lead back, Agnew went back-to-back with three pointers to give the Lions its largest lead of the half at 38-34 with less than 90 seconds before halftime. A Dayton three cut the SLU lead to one point at the end of the first half, 38-37.

Southeastern tried to keep the momentum going at the start of the second half as Roscoe Eastmond came up with a steal and found Woodard for a transition three to give SLU a 41-37 lead out of the break. Dayton scored the next four points to tie the score, but buckets by Roger McFarlane and Eastmond reestablished the four-point Lion advantage at 45-41 with less than 18 minutes left in the game. Dayton scored the next eight points to take a 49-45 lead.

Anderson beat the Flyer defense down the floor following a Dayton missed shot for a transition bucket to tie the score at 51-51 with 11:15 left, but that’s where things got away from the Lions. The Flyers went on a 12-0 run before Anderson ended the spurt with a bucket with less than 6:30 left in the game. The Lions continued to battle, cutting the deficit all the way down to five points, 77-72, on an Anderson fastbreak bucket, but would get no closer.

Agnew scored a season best 20 points in the contest, 18 of those coming in the first half as he was nearly perfect during the first 20 minutes, and had a pair of steals. Anderson scored 14 points and dished out five assists. Donte Houston went four-of-five from the field and three-of-four from the stripe for 11 points to go with four rebounds.

After shooting 51.9% in the first half, including 43.8% in the first half, things slowed down just a bit in the second half for Southeastern in the second half as SLU finished the game hitting at 47.3% as a team and 34.6% from three. Meanwhile, Dayton shot 50% in the first half and went up from there, shooting 70.6% in the second half to finish at 58.1% for the game. Also helping the Flyers in the game was their ability to get to the free throw line as Dayton went 23-of-34 at the stripe while SLU got to the line just 18 times and hit 13 of them.

The Lions (4-5) look to use home cooking to end the first two-game skid of the season on Wednesday night as Belhaven comes to Hammond. Tip-off of Wednesday’s game against the Blazers (2-3) is set for 7:00 P.M. at the University Center.

HARDWOOD CLUB/S CLUB
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