ATLANTA – Freshman Nick Coppola and junior Chinedu Amajoyi scored career-highs for the ULM men's basketball program, but first-place Georgia State prevailed 75-60 on Thursday at the Sports Arena.
Coppola posted 16 points for ULM (8-13, 5-8 SBC) including four three-pointers. He also taliled five points and five rebounds. Amajoyi netted 11 points and went three-for-four from beyond-the-arc. Junior Tylor Ongwae scored 14 points and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds.
GSU (19-7, 12-1 SBC) was led by Manny Atkins who scored 21 and Devonta White with 20 points. R.J. Hunter put in 12 points and Markus Crider had 10 off the bench.
Hot shooting early gave the Panthers an 8-2 edge in the first half. GSU was up by 10 when sophomore Daniel Grieves drained a three-pointer and Ongwae capitalized on a basket in transition to make it a 24-19 game at the 8:09 mark.
ULM further cut into the GSU lead at 29-26 after a three-pointer by Coppola with 4:04 to go. The Panthers closed the half on a 6-0 run to take a 37-28 lead into the intermission.
GSU began the second half on a 6-0 run to go up 43-28 as ULM called timeout with 17:48 left. The Panthers led 51-33 when the Warhawks went on a 5-0 run, capped by a converted and-one by junior Marvin Williams to make it 51-38 with 12:28 remaining.
The Panthers led 65-45 when ULM made a late push and made a 9-0 run to make it a 65-54 game with 3:51 to go. A three-pointer by Amajoyi further cut it to 67-57 at the 3:32 mark.
The Warhawks will close out the weekend at WKU in a nationally televised game on ESPN3 at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday.
Support the Warhawks through participating in the Athletic Foundation, you can join the ULMAF by calling 318-342-5415. Be sure to cheer on your Warhawks in person; to purchase tickets, please call 318-342-3ULM for visit the athletic ticket homepage.
NOTES
- In its first-ever road game at Georgia State, the Warhawks out-rebounded the Panthers 37-32 and held a 10-6 edge in second chance points
- Freshman Nick Coppola's career-high came on 5-of-11 shooting and two-for-two from the free throw line. It was his sixth double-figure scoring game of the season and the first time he's led the team in scoring. His previous career-best was 12 points against Arkansas State on Jan. 30
- Junior Chinedu Amajoyi's career-high came on three-for-four shooting from three-point range and two-for-three from the free throw line. It marked the second time this season he's hit a trio of three-pointers in a game. It was his second career double-figure scoring game. Amajoyi's previous career-best was 10 points against Arkansas State on Jan. 30
- Junior Tylor Ongwae netted his 13th consecutive double-figure scoring game, reaching that mark in every SBC contest. He's reached double-digits in 19 of 21 games on the season
- With five regular season games still remaining, ULM has already doubled its season win total and has topped its conference win total by two games from last season. ULM was 4-23 overall and 3-17 in SBC play last year
Quoting ULM head coach Keith Richard
Opening Statement
“We got off to a poor start. Georgia State was making shots and we were struggling at getting to them from our zone; but we re-grouped and slowly got back into the game. We started playing better in the middle of the first half, but the last two minutes of it was not good. It was a three point game and Georgia State got it up to nine in that stretch. We had a couple good looks in that period that we really needed to make but didn't. We then got off to a bad start early in the second half. Georgia State is really good though. We're just not as good offensively. We struggled to guard them, like most teams do. We needed to go score with them because we were struggling to get stops. We were trying to keep pace but we just don't have the fire-power to do that. We did have good moments in the game though as well.”
On freshman Nick Coppola
“He did well. He shot it 11 times when he should have shot it 20. That's the freshman in him but he turned down a lot of shots. Though, he certainly played well offensively and we need that the rest of the way.”
On his double-figure scorers
“Nick and Chin were tentative early in the game. Tylor as well. They were all tentative and we had talked about making shots coming into this game. Yet, they all seemed to be tentative to go shoot. As the game went on though we started playing a little bit better and we looked good doing it, but it was a little too late.”