EKU jumps on top early, cruises past Fairleigh Dickinson, 68-39

Wendy Haun

RICHMOND — In its only win so far of the season, Fairleigh Dickinson used its defense — a triangle-two spread — to thoroughly disrupt Central Michigan.

However, the only disruption Monday night when the Colonels faced the Knights at McBrayer Arena was the effects Eastern Kentucky University’s three-point shooting had on the scoreboard.

EKU (2-1) opened with a 10-0 run, including three-pointers from Josh Jones and Dayvon Ellis, and shot 50 percent from beyond the arc in the first half to roll to a 68-39 win in the CBE Classic over FDU in the first of three-straight games.

“That defense was bothersome to Central Michigan in their game two days ago,” EKU coach Jeff Neubauer said. “FDU beat Central Michigan because of that defense. With Josh Jones knocking out those early shots, it shut them down defensively.”

After the opening run, EKU didn’t scale back, quickly expanding that lead. Josh Taylor, Josh Daniel, Ellis, Papa Oppong and Jones all hit threes in the first half for the Colonels, who had a 40-19 lead at halftime.

“We are a team of shooters,” Daniel said. “Every day in practice, I don’t know if we have one guy on the team who can’t shoot. So you know if one guy isn’t making shots, someone else is going to step up. Everyone was making shots tonight so it’s always helpful when we’re doing that.”

Despite Neubauer’s fears at the break that the defensive effort out of their 1-3-1 zone wouldn’t quite be duplicated in the second half, EKU came out with the same fire, only allowing FDU to score 20 points in the second half off 34.8 percent shooting.

FDU (1-3) only hit two of 12 three-pointers in the game.

“The thing I’m impressed with was in the first half, we held them to 19 points and sometimes when you go into the locker room with a 21-point lead and you really guarded the team well, sometimes it’s hard to play defense as well in the second half,” Neubauer said.

Daniel had a team-high 14 points, including 3-of-5 from beyond the arc, and also had five boards and two steals. The Colonels had 20 assists to just seven turnovers.

“Josh has done a good job in all three of the games we’ve played,” Neubauer said. “He’s a good shooter, but he also was one of our leading rebounders tonight. He took great value for the ball. He came up with two steals. I really like the way he’s moving out there on the court and I like the confidence he has right now.”

Taylor scored 13 points and also had four boards and five assists. Ellis and Spencer Perrin both added nine points, Jones added eight and Oppong and Stommes — who was averaging a team-high 26 points going into this game — only scored five.

Alvin Mofunanya was the leading scorer for FDU with 14 points and seven boards. Coming off the Central Michigan game where he had 22 points, six blocks and nine rebounds, the senior only had one block on the night.

“We learned from the Pitt game when we got our shot blocked 12 times,” Neubauer said. “Even though we were playing against a very talented shot blocker in Mofunanya, who is one of the best shot-blockers in the country. He’s averaging four blocks a game and he only blocked one of our shots.”

EKU will face California-Irvine at 6 p.m. tonight at McBrayer Arena. The Anteaters (2-2) fell to Texas-San Antonio, 66-56, in the second game Monday night in Richmond.

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