Basketball begins with bang

Michael Forsyth

Junior forward Jared Holmes goes up for a layup in the Bobcats’ season opener against Carver Bible Nov. 17. The Bobcats handled the Cougars 59-47 to improve to 1-0.

Men open 2010-11 season with 59-47 victory over Carver Bible

The GCSU men’s basketball team opened up their fall season on Wednesday with a win against the Carver Bible College Cougars.

At the start of the first half, the Bobcats struck first with a layup from junior forward Ryan Aquino to take a 2-0 lead.

GCSU managed to quickly take control of the game when less than four minutes in, a jumper by junior forward Jared Holmes gave the Bobcats a ten-point led with the score at 10-2.

GCSU continued to maintain control over the Cougars and secured a15-point lead when two free throws by senior guard Andre Mikell set the score at 26-11 with 6:09 remaining in the half.

Refusing to let up, the Bobcats managed to dominate over Carver and when 26 seconds remained in the first half, Holmes sank two shots from the free throw line and set the halftime score at 35-21 in favor of the Bobcats.

The first half ended with the Bobcats leading the Cougars 36-21.

The highest scorer in the first half for GCSU was Holmes, who tacked 12 points onto the Bobcat scoreboard. Holmes was 5-9 for field goals and 2-2 on free throws.

Aquino seconded Holmes’ efforts by scoring 10 points for the Bobcats in the first half and was 5-6 on field goals.

“We had a great crowd out there, so that got us going at first,” Aquino said. “Big plays definitely feed our team’s energy, but that’s not always good enough. Sometimes you have to bring the energy when things aren’t going your way.”

When the second half began, Holmes was quick to add two more points to the GCSU scoreboard from two free throws with less than a minute in.

As the game progressed, the Bobcats’ high number of rebounds helped them to maintain their lead over Carver.

When the clock began to run out, the Cougars were able to slightly decrease the point spread between them and the Bobcats to nine points with 4:55 with the score at 53-44.

Although Carver attempted to catch up to GCSU, they were unable to do so and a final two points scored by Aquino from the courtesy line with 26 seconds remaining gave the Bobcats an opening season game victory with the final score at 59-47. GCSU out-rebounded the Cougars 52-29.

Aquino was the Bobcats’ highest scorer for the game with a total of 16 points. He was 7-9 on field goals and 2-2 from the free throw line. Holmes seconded that effort with total of 13 points scored and was 5-11 on field goals and 3-4 on free throws. Even though Holmes’ class rank is a junior, he spent his first two years at Kankakee College in Ill. and Wednesday’s victory was his first game in a Bobcat jersey.

Posted by Sam Hunt on Nov 18 2010. Filed under Lead stories, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.