CMU Men Fall In Florida Opener

MIAMI – The Central Michigan men's basketball team opened its trip to Florida on Tuesday with a 96-76 loss to Florida International at the Panthers' Ocean Bank Convocation Center.

The Chippewas (0-2), who opened the season on Saturday with a 74-72 loss at Illinois-Chicago, are scheduled to play Flagler College on Wednesday (7 p.m.) on the same court. Flagler is a Division II school in St. Augustine, Fla.

How It Happened
FIU (3-0) put the Chippewas on their heels with a 12-4 run to close the first half for a 41-30 lead at the break. The Panthers outscored CMU, 25-8, over the first 5 ½ minutes of the second half for a 66-38 margin.

CMU never got closer than 19 points the rest of the way.

"Proud of our guys," CMU coach Keno Davis said. "A lot of things went against us tonight, and our guys had a chance to kind of lay down in that game when we knew we couldn't come back, but I thought you saw some resiliency."

Hot Outside
The Panthers made 18 of their 41 3-point attempts (43.9 percent). Five of those triples came during FIU's decisive run early in the second half.

"When the threes start going against you, it's tough to recover," Davis said. "There was a 10-, 12-point run that they had where we didn't get a couple calls, they made a couple threes, we hung our head for a little bit and pretty soon it was out of reach. That's a learning process for us and hopefully it's a quick learn at that.

"But I like the way we were able to finish the game."

Leaders
Senior guard Travon Broadway Jr., a Miami native, scored a career-high 19 points to lead the Chippewas. Aundre Polk, a 6-foot-10 freshman playing just his second collegiate game, added 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting.

Eric Lovett hit six 3-pointers en route to a game-high 20 points, leading five double-figure scorers for FIU.

Improvement
The Chippewas made eight of their 18 3-point tries (44.4 percent), a vast improvement on their 2-for-18 performance from long range in Saturday's season-opening loss at UIC.

But overall, CMU shot 41.8 percent from the field and just 51.8 percent (12 for 22) from the free throw line.

"I liked our shot selection from the 3-point range," Davis said. "I thought we got open looks today. We didn't finish like we need to finish or go to the contact to demand the foul call like we should. You know when you're in nonconference play and you come down to Florida International a lot of those calls aren't going to go your way, that's part of playing on the road out of conference.

"But you have to be able to play a little tougher and not get frustrated. I felt like some of our frustration on (offense) led to runs that kind of ended the game for us."

Looking Ahead
The Chippewas will face a good Flagler team on Wednesday. The Saints (0-1) lost to Florida International on Friday, 82-75, after dropping an exhibition game to the Panthers two days earlier, 85-81.

Job No. 1 for CMU against Flagler will be stopping 6-2 guard Jaizec Lottie, a transfer from Arkansas Little Rock who averaged 29.5 points in the Saints' two matchups with FIU.

"We understand that this schedule that we put together may not be ideal, but it's to try to prepare us for conference (play)," said Davis, whose team will play only two more nonconference games before going to Western Michigan on Dec. 18 for the Mid-American Conference opener. "If we had a couple of home games that were easy games, maybe as a coach you'd like it because you'd be able to try some different things and work on some things, but to try to make your team better, these couple games (in Florida), hopefully we'll look back and say hey these games helped us for MAC play."

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Team Stats

Travon Broadway Jr.

Aundre Polk

Ralph Bissainthe

PJ Mitchell

Players Mentioned

Travon Broadway Jr.

Aundre Polk

Players Mentioned

Travon Broadway Jr.

Aundre Polk