Men’s Basketball Outlasts Rice

Thursday, January 9

Houston, Texas

8 p.m.

Florida Atlantic

-115,30 CUSA

Rice

-88,03 CUSA

FAU

Rice

Photo by: JC Ridley/Owlpix.com

1/10/2020 12:04:00 AM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

HOUSTON, Texas - The Florida Atlantic University men's basketball team improved to 3-0 in Conference USA play with an 81-76 victory over Rice on Thursday night. FAU is now 11-5 overall on the season.

How It Happened

FAU was able to consistently penetrate the Rice defense in the early going, scoring its first eight points of the game on layups. Later on in the half, FAU began to attack from the perimeter, making four 3-pointers in four and a half minutes, stretching its lead to nine, 22-13, in the process.

FAU's advantage reached as many as a dozen in the period, but a Rice triple cut the FAU cushion to 40-31 at the half.

Cornelius Taylor began the second half with a flurry of baskets, scoring FAU's first 11 points, giving FAU a 52-33 lead. Michael Forrest nailed a 3-pointer that made the score 55-33.

At that point, Rice began to chip away at the deficit, ultimately taking a 68-67 edge with 4:32 to play in the game. Forrest immediately responded with his fourth triple of the night, and Richardson Maitre quickly followed with a jumper from the top of the key, allowing FAU to retake the lead, 72-68.

Rice pulled to within one, 72-71, but as he had early in the half, Taylor took over down the stretch, scoring seven of FAU's final nine points, to secure the win.

Notables

Taylor had 34 points, including going 7-of-10 from three-point range, to lead all scorers. He's the first FAU player to score 30 points in a game since Forrest had 32 against Marshall on Jan. 17, 2019
Forrest scored 12 points, all of them coming on 3-pointers
Big men Aleksandar Zecevic and Darden Kapiti came off the bench to score 10 points each. Zecevic added eight rebounds
Maitre just missed a double-double with nine points and a career-high eight rebounds
FAU made 12 3-pointers on the night, improving to 7-0 on the year when making at least nine in a game
The win evened the all-time series at four victories each
11-5 is FAU's best season start at the Division I level
FAU is 3-0 in conference play for the first time since 2010-11, when it was in the Sun Belt Conference

Quotable

FAU Head Coach Dusty May
"Our guys really believe in each other and they know that somebody's going to step up."

What's Next

FAU finishes its road trip at North Texas on Saturday, Jan. 11. Tip-off is set for 4 p.m. Eastern. The game will be streamed on ESPN+. Live stats will be available at fausports.com. The game can be heard on FOX Sports 640AM. Live updates will be posted to the team's official Twitter account, @FAU_Hoops.