ANDERSON, S.C. - The Anderson men's basketball team trimmed a late 10-point deficit to one possession in the final moments, but 13th-ranked Lincoln Memorial held on for a 65-61 South Atlantic Conference victory, Tuesday night at the Abney Athletic Center.
Anderson slipped to 1-4 overall and 0-2 in the conference, while Lincoln Memorial, the defending conference champion, improved to 5-0 overall and 3-0 in the league.
Senior guard Myson Jones led the Trojans with 14 points and
shared team-high honors with three assists, while sophomore center
Rakish Taylor came off the bench to score a career-high 13 points
in 21 minutes of action. Senior guard Alani Adekambi added 11
points and grabbed five rebounds, with senior guard Nick Jackson
tallying seven points and a game-high nine rebounds.
LMU sophomore guard Luquon Choice led all scorers with 25 points,
while teammate Lorenza Ross added 18 points and a game-high five
assists. Gerel Smith recorded 12 points for the Railsplitters.
With Anderson trailing by one with 13:16 on the clock, the Trojans scored seven unanswered points to take a 12-6 lead with less than 11 minutes left in the opening half. Sophomore Steven Faust sparked the run by grabbing his own miss and sticking it back in the basket, with Taylor adding three points during the run and Adekambi capped the surge with a jumper in the paint.
The six-point advantage turned out to be the Trojans' largest of the contest, as LMU countered with a 9-0 outburst of its own to regain a 15-12 lead at the eight-minute mark.
The contest featured two ties and six lead changes over the next three-plus minutes, with the Railsplitters taking a lead they would not surrender, at 22-21, on a jumper by Ross with 4:26 left in the half and Lincoln Memorial took a 26-23 edge at intermission.
LMU built its lead to nine by starting the second-half with six straight points and held at least a four-point edge for the next 13 minutes of the game and claimed a double-digit, 61-51, cushion on Choice's seventh 3-pointer of the night with less than six minutes left in the game.
The Trojans still trailed by double-digits at the 4:24 mark, but trimmed LMU's lead to just four, as Taylor recorded a slam followed quickly by Jones' third trey of the game, and Adekambi connected on 1-of-2 from the line to pull AU within 63-59 with less than two minutes on the clock. After Ross misfired on one of his two from the line inside the final minute, freshman Maurice Howard drove the lane and dropped in a layup to get the Trojans within 64-61.
Simmons drew a foul from Taylor with five ticks left and connected on one of two from the charity stripe to set the final score.
After playing five games in 12 days to open the season, the
Trojans have a seven-day layoff before hitting the road for a
two-game road conference road swing, beginning at Brevard on Dec.
3.
