UNC Wilmington Holds Off Tribe in CAA Opener

11/30/05 9:46PM

WILLIAMSBURG, VA - UNC Wilmington guard John Goldsberry scored a game-high 15 points and the Seahawks withstood a furious second-half rally by William and Mary to earn a 75-66 victory Wednesday night at Kaplan Arena

In the conference opener for both teams, UNCW (5-1, 1-0 CAA) shot a blistering 52% from the field (26-for-50), including an 8-for-16 performance from three-point range, and used its trademark stifling man-to-man defense to hold back W&M’s (4-2, 0-1) offense for nearly three quarters of the contest and snap the Tribe’s three-game winning streak.

Todd Hendley added 14 points off the bench for the Seahawks, winners of three straight overall and four consecutive in the series, and Temi Soyebo scored 10 to give UNCW three in double-figures.

Sophomore forward Laimis Kisielius (Vilnius, Lithuania) paced the Tribe with 13 points on 5-of-10 FG shooting, while freshman guard Calvin Baker (Newport News, VA) scored 12 and juniors Adam Payton (Burlington, NJ) and Corey Cofield (Newton, MA) each chipped in with 10.

UNCW, which never trailed in the game, held the Tribe without a field goal for over four minutes during two different first-half stretches, and Goldsberry, who finished a perfect 4-for-4 from the field with four treys, canned three of his three-pointers as the Seahawks built a 42-24 lead at the break.

The Seahawks extended the lead to 23, 59-36, the largest of the game, on Beckham Wyrick’s lay-in with 13:01 remaining, before the Tribe turned up its own defensive intensity and flipped the offensive switch to mount an 18-5 run over the next eight minutes to get within 10, 64-54, on Payton’s fast-break dunk with 4:51 on the clock.

Kisielius’ three-point play with 10:45 remaining jump-started the rally, and Cofield’s turn-around jumper cut the deficit to 17. A couple of free throws from freshman Alex Smith (Greenville, SC) and a huge three-pointer from sophomore Nathan Mann (Overland Park, KS) cut it to 12, before a Tribe steal led to Payton’s dunk.

However, Soyebo drained a pair from the line to stop the run, and UNCW had an answer for each Tribe bucket the rest of the way, as W&M got no closer than 10, before Payton’s lay-up with 7.1 seconds on the clock set the final margin. Cofield hit two from the line with 3:59 remaining to make it 66-56, but Wyrick’s baseline reverse lay-up pushed the Seahawks’ lead back to 12 on the next possession. Junior Brian Hutt (Denver, CO) again trimmed the deficit to 10 with an offensive rebound and putback, but Hendley sealed the Tribe’s fate with an offensive stick-back of his own with 2:23 remaining to extend UNCW’s lead back to 70-58.

UNCW out-rebounded the Tribe, 34-24, led by Soyebo’s seven, while Goldsberry and Wyrick each added five boards.

W&M forced 11 UNCW turnovers in the second half and shot 48.3% from the field (14-for-29), but it wasn’t enough to overcome eight first-half turnovers and a 0-for-8 performance from three-point range in the opening period.

Baker added a career-high six assists and a pair of steals, and Alex Smith finished with six points and a team-high four rebounds in his third start of the season. Cofield finished with three boards and a pair of steals.

W&M returns to action on Saturday afternoon in another CAA contest, when the Tribe travels to Towson for a 4:00 PM tip. UNCW is also in league play Saturday, hosting Virginia Commonwealth at 2:30 PM.


Post-Game Quotes
William and Mary Head Coach Tony Shaver
“I thought maybe the difference in the ball game was [UNCW’s] experience, their maturity. I think their team clearly knows better than we do right now how they want to approach the ballgame. They’re extremely good defensively, but very good offensively too.”

“I think the most important thing for us to take out of this game, is that we’ve got to understand early that we can play with these people. We doubted ourselves early in the ball game, but then we get down and we play with great heart and great passion, and I’m very proud of that, but we’ve got to learn on the opening tip that we’re capable of doing those things for 40 minutes.”

“I thought our entire defensive intensity picked up a little bit [in the second half]. Probably the credit for that ought to go to Hawley Smith, our senior captain. It’s good to see him back in uniform, he’s not quite where he needs to be yet, but I thought his spirit and his passion for the game really brought others along with him and that was an important part of the second half.”

“They are as good a defensive team as we’ll play against, in my opinion. And they’re very experienced. They’ve been doing it for a long time and they really understand how they want to play.”


UNC Wilmington Head Coach Brad Brownell
“What we’ve been able to do is get off to great starts. I credit our older players for really having our kids ready to play. As a coach, you talk about being ready to play, you hope that your guys are going to be ready, but if your younger players se your older players motivated and ready, I think that’s more than any coach-speak can give. We’ve come out to the start the last few games especially well. It was nice to see us shoot the ball a little bit better tonight than we have been shooting it. This is a good William and Mary team, Coach Shaver has done a really good job. They’ve got some nice athletes and a nice mix of players and this was a good win for us.”

“We just turned the ball over a little bit too much in the second half. If we didn’t turn it over, we got great shots. [W&M] was gambling so much that if you can get it out of the trap you’re going to have a good opportunity to score. We turned it over a couple times too many, but at the same time we finished a lot of plays.”

On W&M having one turnover in the second half, after making eight in the first
“That’s the area where I think we probably didn’t do as good a job. If anything, we probably let up more on the defensive end than we do offensively and that’s the part that bothers me the most. We chart our deflections and all that, we’ve been through the roof in deflections and effort stats in the first half, and then obviously you build a 20-point lead and you try to convince your kids they’ve got to play just as hard in the second half and sometimes it doesn’t seem like that is always the case.”


UNCW Senior John Goldsberry
“It was a hard-fought battle out there, which we knew it would be, especially in the second half. We’ll be anxious to get home and have a home game on Sunday.”

“We knew coming in that William and Mary was going to be a tough team. They’re going to be a good team this year in the league.”


Box Score