our dice tonight and couldnt beat them. | Forum
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Jun 25 '18
MINNEAPOLIS -- Akeem Springs came off the bench to score 19 points and Nate Mason added 18 for Minnesota, which came from behind in the second half and escaped with a 74-68 victory against NJIT on Tuesday night. Logan Cooke Jersey .Springs and Mason each hit four 3-pointers as Minnesota was 9 of 21 from beyond the arc. Freshman Amir Coffey added 13 points and eight rebounds for the Gophers (8-1), who have equaled their win total from last season.A back-and-forth affair saw 13 lead changes, but NJIT never led by more than three points before Minnesota used a 7-0 run to take a 65-61 lead.This is a scary time of year in the sense of, you know, you get a lot of home games, obviously the names are not as big as some of the other big ones, so youve got to get your guys to understand you can lose to anybody, Gophers coach Richard Pitino said. You see it every single night, and you try to tell your guys over and over again, and sometimes just feeling it is a nice wake up call.Rob Ukawuba led the Highlanders (5-5) with 18 points. NJIT committed just seven turnovers but shot 34.2 percent from the field and was 8 of 32 from 3.Were a program thats on the rise and were past moral victories, to be honest with you, Highlanders coach Brian Kennedy said. This is a game that hurts a lot to lose because we felt if we played the way we know were capable of playing, it was going to be a good game.BIG PICTURENJIT: The Highlanders continued to show they can hang with the Big Ten. Two years ago on the same day, NJIT went on the road and beat No. 17 Michigan. Earlier this season, the Highlanders went to Purdue and had the game within single digits in the final minutes before losing 79-68. NJIT averaged 61.1 per game and forced 16.44 turnovers per game heading into Tuesday. Against Minnesota, the Highlanders shot 73 times and forced 14 turnovers.Minnesota: Pitino tried to beef up the nonconference portion of the schedule. After posting wins against St. Johns, Arkansas and on the road at Vanderbilt, the Gophers stumbled against the Highlanders, who entered the game 267th in the nation in the Ratings Percentage Index.KEY MATCHUPNJIT guard Damon Lynn entered the game as the active scoring leader in Division with 1,927 points. He had scored at least 20 in six of the teams first nine games.Mason took the brunt of the defensive responsibility and helped hold Lynn to 12 points on 5-of-24 shooting.Never really let him get an open look the whole night, Kennedy said of Mason. Damons had a great, great career for us. I wouldnt trade that kid for anybody in the country. He just had an off night shooting tonight.HE SAID ITI think tomorrows really going to help the team; seeing how we respond, seeing if were hungry, Springs said. We got hit in the mouth and its good for us. I think tomorrow is whats really going to see if we respond the way we should respond. If we come in hungry, and like coach says, if we work.UP NEXTNJIT: A road-heavy month continues for the Highlanders, who play at Kent State on Dec. 10. NJIT has just one home game in the month of December.Minnesota: Tuesdays game was the start of five straight nonconference games at home before the Gophers open the Big Ten at home against Michigan State. Minnesota hosts Georgia Southern on Dec. 9. Tanner Lee Jersey . Down by seven with 90 seconds left in regulation, thats where they looked comfortable. Leon Jacobs Jersey . Houston won 3-0 to advance to face New York in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Last in the game, Di Vaio and Romero got into a shoving match with several Houston players. Romero appeared to elbow and kick Houston defender Kofi Sarkodie. http://www.cheapjaguarsjerseysauthentic.com/ . Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC failed to make the postseason while Montreal Impact fell at the first hurdle losing heavily to Houston Dynamo in the Eastern Conference Knockout Round. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Up until Wednesday night, life in Rio was pretty good for players on the U.S. mens basketball team.They stayed on a luxury ship, and cruised past a couple of badly outmatched opponents. They played tourist at the Christ the Redeemer statue, and went on a field trip to watch Michael Phelps win yet another gold medal.Then an Australian team with a little pedigree of its own served notice that maybe the Olympic gold medal isnt such a foregone conclusion after all.Banged about and taken out of their game, the U.S. had to rally in the fourth quarter to salvage a 98-88 win that was even closer than the score indicated. Sheer talent -- and some timely 3s from Carmelo Anthony -- saved the Americans, but the Boomers from Down Under exposed some weaknesses even if they were not able to get the final job done.The look afterward of relief on the faces of some U.S. players told the story as well as anything.It got real, Paul George said. It definitely got real.This was supposed to be another romp in the park for the collection of NBA stars that is the U.S. Olympic team. Australia is good -- starting five NBA players of its own -- but no one expected it to be terribly close.That included the bookies in Las Vegas, who installed the U.S. team as a 27.5 point favorite after two laughers to open the tournament.What the bookies didnt realize was this wasnt just another opponent that was going to be intimidated. This was an Australian team plenty confident in its own abilities, a team that has played together in various incarnations for years.They battled for rebounds, fought over loose balls. They played hard and they played physical, refusing to give any possession away.Mostly, though, they played like they belonged on the same court as the U.S. players.I think its the Australian culture, said Joe Ingles, whose day job is playing for the Utah Jazz. Were not afraid of anyone. Were not going to back down to anyone. Were going to play the same way if its the top team or a low-ranked team.Andrew Bogut had warned his teammates before the game not to fall into the trap of paying too much respect to the Americans. Thats hard for most teams to keep from doing, even though the U.S. is full of new players and missing past Olympians like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.Once things got physical, though, it was anyones game. The Australians led by five at half, and still clunng to a 2-point lead early in the fourth quarter before Anthony and Kyrie Irving combined to turn the tide. Taven Bryan Jersey. He was special tonight, George said of Anthony, the four-time Olympian who scored 31 points. Hes the reason we won tonight.The U.S. wouldnt have been eliminated had it somehow lost, but there is a certain pride factor when it comes to U.S. Olympic basketball teams. Theyve won two gold medals and 19 Olympic games in a row after the culture of the program was changed by USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo in the wake of the Olympic debacle of 2004 and the loss in the 2006 World Championships.Colangelo was watching courtside as the team he built on the theory that chemistry is just as important as talent struggled to contain Australia defensively and was taken out of its offensive flow by the aggressive play of the Australians.There were only two possible scenarios after the first half tonight, Colangelo said. One is the streak is over. The second is that theyre not invincible because we had a close game.Thanks to Anthony and Irving, who combined for all but the last 2 points of the fourth quarter for the Americans, the second scenario was the one that played out. Afterward, almost everyone connected to the U.S. program tried to take a positive out of it, saying a close game will prove good for the team as it chases the gold.Its pretty obvious why its good for us, said coach Mike Krzyzewski, who screamed at an official after Boguts hard foul on Irving in the third quarter. You beat one of the best teams in the tournament. You beat a team thats going to vie for a gold medal. You beat a team that was undefeated and has played together for years, a really good basketball team so I dont know how that could not be good for us.It was good for Australia, too, though the Boomers had to wonder if anyone can beat the U.S. after just falling short in their best effort.Asked if the Americans could be beaten, longtime NBA player and assistant Australian coach Luc Longley didnt exactly offer a lot of hope.Not tonight, he said. We rolled all our dice tonight and couldnt beat them.----Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg ;Cheap NFL Autographed Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys 2020 Wholesale Jerseys Cheap Jerseys Store Black China NFL Jerseys Jerseys NFL CheapChina NFL Jerseys ' ' '
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