A blistering start and a smothering defense allowed the High Point University men's basketball team to record a historic 70-50 win over Big South foe Charleston Southern on Saturday afternoon at the Millis Athletic Center.
HPU (20-8, 10-2 Big South) grabbed a double-digit lead just five minutes into the game and never looked back leading the Panthers to the first 20-win season in the program's eight-year NCAA Division I history. High Point's last 20-win campaign was a 24-7 finish in 1995-96. The loss was the fourth in a row for Charleston Southern (8-20, 2-11), who also remained winless on the road this year at 0-14.
Junior Arizona Reid led High Point finishing with 28 points, seven rebounds and a season highs in assists (four) and steals (three). Junior Mike Jefferson, who has struggled shooting the ball recently, found his stroke scoring 15 points including a trio of treys while also handing out five assists. Freshman Eugene Harris chipped in 13 points for the Panthers along with a team-best six assists with senior Landon Quick pulling down a career best eight rebounds as HPU's top rebounder. Freshman center Cruz Daniels tallied six of the team's eight blocked shots to match his career high.
Dwayne Jackson scored 19 points to pace the Bucs who also got 11 points from Marquise Duvall. Shawn Outen missed a double-double by a single point finishing with 10 rebounds and nine points in the loss.
High Point scored the first 11 points of the game and held a 31-7 lead just over 10 minutes into play. The Panthers connected on 13-of-16 shots (81.2 percent) including 5-of-7 (71.4 percent) from long distance during that span. Jefferson hit three treys to spark the High Point offense. Defensively, HPU also forced 10 CSU turnovers in that stretch while holding the Bucs to just 2-of-11 (18.2 percent) shooting.
"The first 10 minutes of the game may have been the best stretch of basketball we've played this season," said HPU head coach Bart Lundy, who has now guided the Panthers to double-digit conference wins in two of his four seasons. "We hit some big shots on offense and did a great job of guarding them on the defensive end. I was glad to see Mike (Jefferson) have some shots fall for him because he has been working really hard in practice."
After the strong start, High Point's offense went cold going scoreless for seven minutes allowing Charleston Southern to score 12 straight points to cut the deficit in half with two minutes left in the period. Reid stepped up for the Panthers scoring the next seven HPU points including a 30-foot three-pointer at the halftime buzzer to give HPU a 38-23 lead.
Reid continued his hot shooting at the start of the second half tallying seven of High Point's first nine points in the period including a fastbreak dunk that pushed the HPU lead to 47-26 at the 15:42 mark. CSU would score the next seven points to close to within 14 points, but that is as close as they could come as HPU pushed their advantage back to 20 points over the next three minutes en route to the final margin.
"I'm very proud of this team" added Lundy. "After we got off to a good start this season 20 wins became a very definite goal of ours and for a team this young to accomplish that feat, it says a lot about the character and determination of this group. We still have some work to do this season, but this is truly a wonderful milestone to reach."
High Point shot 52.8 percent from the floor for the game including a 57.1 percent performance in the first half. Charleston Southern finished the game at just 28.6 percent shooting while both teams committed 15 turnovers.
High Point heads into the final week of the regular season with second place in the Big South Conference wrapped up but a chance to share the regular season conference title still in reach. HPU plays at Big South leading Winthrop on Tuesday at 7 p.m., before hosting VMI next Saturday night in the regular season finale.
