The Elon University men's basketball team picked up its sixth loss of the season on Sunday, falling 69-53 to Radford University. After coming out hot to start the game, Elon quickly lost traction, being out scored 28-18 to finish the half after leading 11-2 early.
Head coach Billy Taylor said the team came out well and showed positives in the first half.
“I thought we played with great energy to come out. We established a paint presence right away, which was important to us and got off to a good start, so we were doing some good things early on, we really battled them in the first half,” Taylor said.
Not much changed in the second half as Radford continued to play dominant, outscoring Elon 39-24. Taylor said the team could not get things going on the offensive side of the ball and could not stop Radford from going on runs.
“We struggled on offense and then we also weren't connected to get the stops and get the defensive rebounds that we needed,” Taylor said.
One bright part of the loss was sophomore center Sam Sherry, who posted a career high in points and rebounds. Sherry finished with 13 points and seven rebounds and said he was happy with his performance but would rather have the win.
“I think it feels good, but I think we just need to come out and get a win,” Sherry said. “I think we have the right keys to be a great team. But like we said, we just got to figure it out on offense and put it together for 40 minutes and I think it'll be good.”
One of the team's biggest leaders, senior guard Torrence Watson, struggled to find a rhythm, going 3-13 from the field. Watson was optimistic though, and said the team just needs to make open shots and get a win to build more confidence.
“I think we got open shots. We just got to hit them next game,” Watson said. “We got good guys in our locker room. Everybody wants to succeed. Everybody wants to be better, but it's just a matter of putting it together in one game.
Watson believes the team is close to finding the success that it desires and said they just have to put a few more things together to get there. Watson said that the team wants to build off the small successful moments and drives to build a full 40 minutes of good basketball.
“Like Coach said, we started off with that 11-2 run, I think now is just figuring out how we keep doing that. Keep it going and not go through spurts and segments where we can score the ball,” Watson said.
Taylor said he has seen glimpses of what the potential of his team truly looks like and has a lot of things to be happy with through the past six losses.
“It's all part of the process. And I appreciate the maturity of these guys, whether it's sitting up here, the guys in the locker room, understanding that it just takes time. We saw a long period of time against N.C. State where we played really good basketball against a high level opponent,” Taylor said. ”Today was another strong first half showing, so we're seeing progress and we're seeing a lot of positives.”