Men's Basketball | 11/29/2016 10:56:00 PM
Box Score Â
POCATELLO, Idaho- Behind a solid defensive effort, the Idaho State men's basketball team beat Lamar 77-60 on Tuesday evening in the team's home opener in Holt Arena. Idaho State improved to 1-6 while Lamar dropped to 4-2.
The Bengal defense forced 16 turnovers and held Lamar to 30 percent shooting from the field. ISU had nine blocks, led by
Novak Topalovic's career-high six.
"We were really good defensively and took good care of the ball," Idaho State coach
Bill Evans said. "Those two things stand out. I think we shared the ball. We had to play pretty good to beat that team because they are a good team."
Robert Jones III had a season and game-high 18 points on 5-8 shooting from the field. He made three 3-pointers on four attempts.
"He is pretty skilled for a big kid," Evans said of Jones. "He is very athletic."
Gary Chivichyan had 13 points,
Geno Luzcando 12 and
Brandon Boyd 12. Topalovic and Luzcando each had a team-high six rebounds.
Ethan Telfair had nine points, seven assists, two steals and four rebounds.
"We had a bunch of guys step up," Evans said. "People will look at the box score and they'll see that Telfair scored nine points and wonder what's wrong. Nothing was wrong. He had seven assists. He played good. Geno was good and Rob was good."
The one area Evans wants to see improvement is in the rebounding battle as Lamar out rebounded the Bengals 47-28 and had 17 offensive rebounds.
"We have to rebound the ball better," Evans said. "I know we can do that."
Idaho State led the entire game and built its biggest lead of the game at 74-56 with 1:28 to play in the game.
ISU led 37-28 at halftime and opened the game by jumping out to a 12-4 lead in the first five minutes. Lamar then cut the Bengal lead to 12-10 before ISU went on a 19-5 run to take a 31-15 advantage with 6:50 left in the half thanks to two free throws by Boyd.
With the Bengals leading 52-42 with 12:54 left in the game, Lamar went on an 8-1 spurt to cut the ISU lead to 53-50 with 10:50 to play. Idaho State then pulled away to extend its lead to double-digits.
ISU returns to the court December 3 at 5 p.m. Mountain Time tip at CSUN. The Bengals then play at Wisconsin on Dec. 7 before hosting Bristol on Dec. 10 back in Holt Arena.
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