Berea Breaks 9 Game Losing Streak in OT against Greensboro College
The Mountaineers pulled out the 91-82 win, in over-time, against Greensboro College on Saturday afternoon; ending their nine game losing streak. Terique Miller had his seasons best with 19 points playing 43 of the 45 minutes.
With 24 lead changes and 12 ties, it was a close game for all 45 minutes and the crowd as well as the players were loving it. Darus Maddox was a key factor for Greensboro; however, he was also a key factor for the Mountaineers win. With 20 seconds left in the first half, you could see a conflict between Maddox and Terique Miller as well as Deandre Lightfoot. Maddox wasn’t only picking at the players on the court, but he would also mouth off to the fans. “Darus Maddox was VERY aggravating,” explains Miller. “I didn’t talk back to him and it got in his head. That was exactly what I wanted to do.” Miller kept his composer throughout and was the second highest scorer in this game.
With Maddox in the players ear after making a 3-pointer and backing it up with a steal then a layup giving Greensboro a 3-point lead, the Mountaineers were ready to prove a point. With 4:30 left of the game, Jair Jackson makes a huge statement-making dunk and draws the foul. Jackson states that “it was just a good play that was made and gave us a little energy boost to finish the game.” And that’s exactly what it did. From then on, the Mountaineers never fell too far behind.
With 33.5 second Jackson ties the game with a layup and Greensboro was unable to answer. Miller rebounds their missed basket with 15 seconds to go. Jackson takes a hard fall at the buzzer; however, he picks himself back up and continues to play for the Mountaineers in overtime.
Berea starts overtime with an 8-0 run in the first 2:50 minutes. By the time Greensboro starts to score, the Mountaineers were already too hot. “They were tired and we would be able to take advantage of that,” explains Terique Miller. However, a key scorer, Gabe Hinton, fouls out just under 3 minutes into overtime. Hinton contributed 10 points and 4 rebounds for the Mounties. Jair Jackson comes in and lands another dunk, but 30 seconds later, also fouls out. “I knew my guys had my back,” states Jackson. It seemed as if none of the boys were nervous about these two key players fouling out because they knew that whoever were to come in would keep pushing this team to their hard-fought win.
So, where does this team go from here? Is this just one win until they go on another losing streak? Or is this the turning point for this young team? “We knew if we just cleaned up a few things then those losses would turn into wins,” says Terique Miller. Now we wait to see if the Mounties can keep this up in tomorrow’s games against Methodist University.
