By Duane Cochran
For MountainEast.org
WHEELING, W.Va. — An old adage that it is tough to beat a team three times in a season proved to be true Friday afternoon in the Mountain East Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament quarterfinals here inside WesBanco Arena.
Sixth-seeded Glenville State, which had dropped a pair of regular season games to the University of Charleston, shook off a rough start and turned the tables on the third-seeded Golden Eagles recording a 77-65 victory.
The win improved the Pioneers to 17-12 and earned Glenville State a spot in Saturday’s semifinals against second-seeded Fairmont State at 8:30 p.m.
GSU, which shot 25.7 percent from the field in the opening half (9 of 35), struggled for much of the game’s first 12 minutes and found itself trailing UC by as many as nine on three occasions. However, in the final 7:27 of the half Glenville State rallied to outscore Charleston 13-4 to knot the game at 28-28 at the break.
The Pioneers’ momentum carried over to the final half as they opened the last 20 minutes on 23-11 spurt to push their lead to 51-39 with 11:14 to play.
“We started getting stops,” said GSU freshman guard Elijah Redfern, who led the Pioneers with 21 points. “That’s what changed.
“Going into halftime we knew we weren’t shooting well, but we also knew we had to keep getting stops and keep rebounding the ball and eventually our shots would fall and they did.”
The Pioneers won the battle on the boards 47-38 and did a masterful job of getting themselves to the foul line where they connected on 21 of 27 attempts. UC, on the other hand, was just 9-for-9 at the line.
Glenville State did get shots to fall in the final half as it connected on 15 of 27 field goals (55.6 percent), including a 5 of 10 showing from long range.
“All year, coach has preached to us that if we win the rebound and turnover battle, he doesn’t see us losing,” GSU’s Samier Kinsler said. “We also talked about putting together a full 40 minutes of basketball all year. Today, we finally did it. Our goal now is to keep doing it and keep coming out with wins.”
Kinsler finished with 16 points and six rebounds, while Ammar Maxwell chipped in 14 points and eight boards. Don Colon-Lewis grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds for the Pioneers, including nine in the pivotal second half.
The loss snapped a seven-game winning streak for Charleston, which finishes the season at 18-10.
UC, which missed a plethora of makeable shots at the rim in the second half, shot 37 percent from the floor in the final 20 minutes (13 of 35). The Golden Eagles tried on a number of occasions to make a run at Glenville in the second half, but every time the Pioneers had an answer.
“I’d put that on myself because I have experience and won the championship last year so I knew they were going to make a run,” said UC senior point guard Dwaine Jones, who finished with 10 points and a game-high seven rebounds. “Some of our young guys haven’t been here before and maybe didn’t know what to expect.
“I think I did a bad job from a leadership standpoint. I should have done a better job of getting us together and keeping our heads on straight at that point.
“But I also think that it’s March and they were really fired up to play and made their runs on us,” Jones added. “My former teammate, Samier Kinsler, came off the bench and really gave them life and, unfortunately, we just did a bad job of responding to it.”
Ja’Corey Lipkins led Charleston with 19 points and seven rebounds. UC, which won the tourney last season, also got nine points from C.J. Meredith and eight from Zach Loveday.