Rush scores career-high 34 points

Box Score
GREENSBORO, February 12, 2007 – Armed with the determination to right a wrong it felt responsible for, the North Carolina A&T men’s basketball team came out of the locker room with a tenacity that was hard to match on Monday.

Led by Steven Rush’s career-high 34 points on 7-for-11 shooting from 3-point range, the Aggies jumped out to a big first-half lead and held on to earn a crucial conference 90-82 win over Florida A&M at Corbett Sports Center in front of nationally-televised audience watching on ESPNU.

It was in stark contrast to the Aggies 55-point output in an overtime loss to Bethune-Cookman on Saturday. The  Aggies reached the 90-point plateau for the third time this season. They have won every time they’ve scored 90 or more. Austin Ewing added 18 and Trahern Chaplin finished with 12.

“That’s our style of basketball,’’ said head coach Jerry Eaves. “We want to get up and down the floor. We want to be in the high 80’s or the 90’s because that means we’re hitting shots and our defense is earning us easy baskets on offense. I thought my team came out and played with a little more fire tonight.”

The Aggies improved to 11-14 overall and 7-6 in the MEAC. The Aggies bunched in a group of six teams that have 4-6 losses in the conference, which means it’s going to be race to the finish to see who gains one of the five byes at the MEAC Tournament in March. MEAC leader Delaware State is 2 ½ games ahead of Morgan State in the standings. 

The Aggies put themselves back in the thick of things in the conference race by jumping out to 36-13 lead over the first 15 minutes of the game. Walter Booth got the Aggies going by scoring the first five points of the game, and Rush capped if off by hitting three 3-pointers over a two-minutes span in the first half that led to the 23-point lead.

But the Rattlers fought back with 3-point shooting. Leslie Robinson, who also had seven 3-pointers, hit one from the top of the key to pull the Rattlers to within nine, 69-60 with 8:33 remaining.

The Rattlers would get as close as six points, before Jason Wills powered to the basket and earned 3-point play that gave the Aggies a 78-69 lead with 3:26 remaining. Twenty seconds later, Wills connected with Greg Roberts going backdoor for an alley-oop dunk and an 11-point lead.

Ewing and Rush, two of the best free shooters in the country, iced the game at the free throw line. “We came ready to win tonight,’’ said Rush, who is now 13 3-pointers shy of breaking Phillip Allen’s single-season 3-pointers made record set 13 years ago. “We wanted to redeem ourselves after the way we played against Bethune-Cookman, so we came out with purpose tonight.”

Coppin State comes into Corbett on Saturday afternoon at 2 to play the Aggies. Morgan State, one of the top teams in the conference comes to town on Feb. 19 in the Aggies home finale.