Starters Finish Off Mercyhurst Men, 79-68
January 7, 2006

Complete Box Score

In baseball, the complete game went into retirement about the same time as Ferguson Jenkins and Steve Carlton.

At Ashland University the complete game lives on, except it’s in basketball, not baseball.

Saturday (Jan. 7) junior guard Rob McRae scored a career high 24 points and all Ashland starters reached double digits in scoring as the Eagles (12-3/4-1 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) won their sixth consecutive game, 79-68 over Mercyhurst.

AU shot 59.1 percent in the first half in taking a 36-30 halftime lead. Mercyhurst (11-4/1-4) got no closer than three points in the second half and that came with 17:24 to play in regulation.

McRae connected on 9-of-16 field goal tries and was 2-for-5 from three-point range. He riddled the Lakers with an assortment of medium-range jumpers. The energetic guard also pulled down six rebounds.

McRae played 37 minutes. Every starter except guard-forward Vahn Knight logged 31 or more minutes. Guard Brett Bartlett and forward Greg Emmons had 14 points apiece, center Justin Brown dropped in 12 points and Knight finished with 11 points.

Emmons was AU’s leading rebounder with eight caroms. The Lakers did an efficient job of keeping Brown off the glass, limiting him to four rebounds, none in the first half. Brown came into the game averaging 9.5 rpg. The Lakers outrebounded Ashland over the initial 20 minutes, 17-12. For the game, MC enjoyed a 32-29 edge on the glass. That’s the first time AU has been outrebounded since playing Findlay on December 10, a stretch of six games.

A half-court team that relies on running precision sets, MC was hurt when the Eagles could open up the game and run. While Ashland didn’t do that as much as it would have liked, the Eagles still owned a 12-4 edge in fastbreak points.

The Lakers’ Avi Fogel led all players in the game with 26 points. Guard Terry Smith had 13 points and center Jeff Daisley finished with 12 points, 10 boards and a pair of rejections.

Ashland shot 53.2 percent (25-57) from the field and hit 50 percent (6-of-12) of its three-point attempts. The ‘Hurst finished at 43.9 percent (25-57). The visitors did make 13-of-17 free throw tries (76.5 percent), but AU countered that by getting to the stripe 32 times and hitting 23 (71.9 percent).

The Eagles return to the court this coming Thursday (Jan. 12) with a trip to Wayne State. That’s the first of four consecutive road contests.