“Next play, let’s move on, let’s focus on the here and now.”
In a tough Southern Conference stretch, the Elon University men’s basketball team is doing just that.
Junior guard Jack Isenbarger ended a game-long field goal-less slump by hitting a big three-pointer to give Elon a late lead the Phoenix held on to as they defeated the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Spartans 72-66 Thursday night for their sixth straight victory.
After missing his first ten shots from the floor, seven of them from beyond the arc, Isenbarger hit a contested trey from just left of the top of the key to give Elon a 68-66 lead, a lead that stuck, with 1:27 left in the game.
“You’ve gotta have shooter’s amnesia some times, just forget it,” said Isenbarger, who ended the night with just six points but a game-high ten rebounds. “One thing that Coach talks about is next play mentality. Every shot’s not going to fall and sometimes the other team is going to make big plays. If you think about that and let that fester with you, it can affect the rest of the game. We did a great job of showing some next play mentality tonight.”
They needed to. It was a game of runs.
Elon started the game on a 9-2 run. Then UNCG went on a 14-4 run. The Phoenix finished the first half on a 14-2 run over the last 6:50 of frame, putting Elon up 39-29 at halftime.
The trend continued in the second half. The Spartans started with a 10-3 run to tie the score five minutes into the half. Elon brought the lead back up to nine with 9:19 left. Then UNCG went on a 10-0 run to get a one-point lead with seven minutes remaining.
The remainder of the game was something Elon head coach Matt Matheny compared to a boxing match.
“When you play a team like this that went on the runs that they did, they threw a couple knockout punches and really knocked us to the mat,” Matheny said. “We were able to struggle and fight and get back up, and at the end, we were able to eke out, fight out a victory."
The Phoenix eked out a victory with a couple big three-pointers.
First, freshman guard Tanner Samson hit a trey with 3:24 left that gave the Phoenix a two-point lead. A layup from UNCG junior guard Trevis Simpson (game-high 21 points on 7-of-25 shooting) and a three-point play from freshman forward Kayel Locke (16 points), with two free throws from Elon junior forward Lucas Troutman mixed in for good measure, gave the Spartans the lead.
It was a 66-65 UNCG lead when Isenbarger hit his only shot of the game.
Elon sophomore forward Ryan Winters, who found himself playing clutch minutes he usually doesn’t, handed the ball off to Isenbarger while screening his teammate’s defender, and the Zionsville, Ind., native let it go.
“No matter how he’s shooting, we know that he’s going to come out at some point in time,” Troutman said of Isenbarger. “He is one of our better shooters and I’ll have him take that shot nine times out of ten. The fact that he made it is still a big relief for us and for him too. It’s great to have such a good shooter.”
Four Elon free throws and a couple of missed shots from the Spartans later, Elon had their sixth straight win.
Troutman, who led the Phoenix with 19 points, said the growth of the team’s leadership helped give his team the win.
“In past years, this might have been a game we would have lost,” he said. “In recent years, well, this year, we’ve really had leadership step up. We’ve really had the team come together overall. It’s just been amazing, having everybody flow so well together and being able to fight out through tough situations, and that’s what we did tonight.”
Elon was aided by UNCG’s shooting woes, especially in the first half, where the Spartans were 11-of-35 (31.4 percent) from the field and just 5-of-13 from the free-throw line.
“As a whole, our team just struggled to put the ball in the whole,” Simpson, the SoCon’s leading scorer, said. “It wasn’t one of our better nights. Don’t get me wrong, Elon’s a good defensive team. They play good team defense, they help, they recover. They don’t make many mistakes on defense. On top of us not being able to knock down shots, it causes bad shooting nights.”
The Phoenix improved the 14-7 overall and 7-2 in conference play. UNCG is now 6-14 overall, 4-5 in the SoCon.
But Matheny is not ready to talk about the standings, maybe ever.
“We’re excited to walk out of here with a victory,” he said. “We talk very little about standings. In fact, we never mention it to our players because we know how quickly it can turn in the grind of the season, late January, early February.”
However, he’s ready to point to the way his team played in a road environment as a big building block for the future.
“I thought the environment tonight was exciting,” he said. “They hit a couple of shots, and it was really electric in here. For us to be able to withstand some of the big shots that they hit and some of the runs that they went on and continued to play and grind out and fight out of here with a win, is great for the growth of our team.”
The Phoenix will shoot for its seventh-straight win Saturday night at 7 p.m. against Samford University in Alumni Gym.