He wasn't even thinking about it.

Right after hitting a three-pointer that gave him 1,000 career points, all Elon University men's basketball junior guard Jack Isenbarger had on his mind was the defense.

"I guess I wasn’t really thinking about it at all," he said. "I was thinking about getting back on defense, setting the tone for defense, getting five, getting our ball screen defense screamed out so we knew what we were in. Nothing really special. I didn’t really think about it much."

The Phoenix had an all-around successful night on the way to an 85-61 victory over Southern Conference North Division rival University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs Thursday night in Alumni Gym.

Isenbarger scored a game-high 23 points, but perhaps the most memorable shot came with 9:01 left in the first half.

After knocking down a lay-up to come within three points of 1,000 just a minute-and-a-half earlier, the junior from Zionsville, Ind., hit a contested three-pointer from the top of the key to give Elon a 26-16 lead and hit the milestone, sending the crowd into wild cheers and applause.

The Mocs stayed resilient, keeping the halftime deficit at 38-28 after junior forward Z. Mason's jumper was good with three seconds remaining in the half.

Early in the second half, with his team's lead being threatened, Elon head coach Matt Matheny got vocal, yelling specifically at his four juniors on the floor - Isenbarger, guard Sebastian Koch and forwards Ryley Beaumont and Lucas Troutman - in visible frustration.

"We’re striving for perfection," Matheny said. "We know, through history, that you will never obtain it. But in your pursuit of perfection, you get better. These guys, regardless of the score, we need them to play at a level for us to improve. I didn’t feel like there was a stretch where we did, and it’s my job to help point that out. We expect a lot out of them. And we weren’t getting it. They are striving for perfection just like we as coaches are."

Did it work?

"A lot of times when we make mistakes out there, you immediately know what went wrong," said Beaumont, who scored 13 points and snagged four rebounds. "There’s some times when we don’t see it and that’s when it’s really important that we listen to exactly what Coach says. Usually you know what’s going wrong. We made some fixes."

The Mocs had cut the Elon lead to seven when the Phoenix went on a 23-5 run over a span of six minutes. In that stretch, Isenbarger, who was 1-of-7 from three-point range prior, hit six threes.

"Just being aggressive and attacking is something we want our offense to look like," Isenbarger said. "Sometimes you get the hot hand and you start to feel it a little bit, and that happened tonight."

The run gave Elon a 65-40 lead with 11:46 left in the half. It was punctuated by a nifty pass-pass-dunk from Isenbarger to Troutman to Koch.

The closest the Mocs got from then on out was 21 points. The Phoenix "subs" continued the trend. Freshman guard Tanner Samson hit four threes in the second half to tie a season/career-high with 12 points.

"He’s getting more comfortable," Matheny said of Samson. "And I think he’s starting to take the right shots, and I think he’s getting a better feel for how long he can set his feet to get it off."

Troutman scored 18 points and snagged eight rebounds while notching three blocks. Koch filled the stat sheet: seven points, six rebounds, six assists and two steals.

Mason scored 14 points and grabbed 13 boards for the Mocs. Freshman guard Gee McGhee had a team-high 15 points and snagged three rebounds, while first-year guard Eric Robertson had 11 points.

The win gives Elon a four-game winning streak and pushes it to a tie with Samford University for first place in the SoCon North Division with a 5-2 record in conference play. While there's a lot to celebrate, Beaumont said the celebration ends at midnight.

"It feels good, but you can’t be happy with it, striving for perfection," he said. "Around 12 o’clock tonight is when the days change, and it’s ready to prepare for a new one. You’re allowed to be happy. It was a good one and there’s definitely some things we can change, but we did some good things too. So you can be happy for it, but at 12 o’clock, it’s a new day and you move on."

Elon shot 48.5 percent from the field for the game, something Matheny was pleased with and credited for helping the Phoenix through mistakes.

"We’re still making mistakes that we need to address and we will," he said. "But I felt like tonight, we shot our way through mistakes. That’s not something you can always rely on, but it’s fun to watch when some of our guys get hot like that. Great victory and we played well in different phases in both halves."

The Phoenix will face The Citadel Saturday afternoon at 2:05 p.m. And while the Phoenix is happy with the win, Isenbarger said there's always improvements.

"You always want to win, that’s the goal," he said. "Like Coach touched on, there’s possessions where we got sloppy with our defense. There was one ball screen where I didn’t get over and we gave up a foul and gave up some easy buckets. We’ve got stuff to fix, but at the same time, we’ll use this confidence going in and continue to play well."

Game Notes

  • The Phoenix played once again without sophomore guard Austin Hamilton, with Samson starting in his place. Hamilton got an MRI Thursday and will get the results tomorrow. Sophomore guard Kevin Blake played for the first time since Jan. 14 after missing two games with a leg injury, playing four minutes in the first half.
  • Elon senior guard Josh Bonney played 17 minutes and notched four assists. Junior forward Eghoesa Edomwonyi had six points and three rebounds in eight minutes of action, scoring his first points of 2013.
  • The Phoenix forced 13 Mocs turnovers and had nine steals. Elon had 20 assists, one less than its season high (21 - against Manchester College Dec. 31, 2012).
  • Troutman is not too far from 1,000 points either. He now has 962 career points and is on the verge of becoming the 36th player in Elon history to hit the mark.