By: Jackson Wolek / Staff Writer
FIU led nearly the entire game until FAU’s Brett Royster scored a layup with 4.2 seconds left in the game, ruining any chances of a Golden Panther upset.
FIU fell to rival FAU in a 73-72 heartbreaking loss on the road in Boca Raton on Feb. 5.
“With four seconds to go, having played the game we just played, it never should have gotten to that,” coach Isiah Thomas said.
The Golden Panthers came out in the first half firing away from beyond the arc, and after threes from Phil Gary, Jeremy Allen and Dominique Ferguson they found themselves quickly up on the Owls 9-0 just three minutes into the game.
“We work at shooting the basketball every day and we try to make sure our players take shots that they’re comfortable with,” Thomas said. “During the start of the game they had comfortable looks and they knocked them down.”
In the first half, 24 of FIU’s 35 points came from beyond the arc, but what was even more impressive was their effort on the defensive end of the ball.
They limited FAU to just 29 points on 45 percent shooting from the field and forced nine turnovers, leading to 15 points off of turnovers. The guard combination of Phil Taylor, who played 33 minutes, and Gary counteracted the tremendous guards the Owls have in Alex Tucker and Raymond Taylor.
Although FIU (9-14, 4-7 SBC) could never push their lead higher than 11, to their credit they never let the lead slip away from them either.
Taylor took control of the game in the last five minutes of the half, scoring nine straight to keep the lead. When it looked like FAU was getting ready to take the lead at 28-27 with 3:38 remaining, the freshman hit a long range three and got fouled on the next three he took which he made one of his free throws to put them up 32-27. The half ended with FIU leading 35-29.
In the second half, FIU maintained a 8 to 12 point lead over FAU (18-7, 10-1 SBC) for a majority of the time, despite Ferguson getting his fourth foul with 16:43 to play.
After taking 12 three-pointers in the first half, they only managed to take two in the second half as FAU tightened up on defense, making sure FIU did not have any opportunities. The lack of scoring from deep and poor defense halfway through was the cause of seeing their 12 point lead at 9:36 fall to just one at 5:59 remaining.
The outcome would boil down to the last minute of play, when the Golden Panthers once again could not find a way to finish what they started.
The Golden Panthers had a seven-point lead with 1:10 remaining but FAU had them right where they wanted them.
The FIU defense could not hold up as the Owls nailed two consecutive three-pointers to stay alive and with 50 seconds left, FIU had the ball with a three-point lead.
The Owls opted not to foul but rather let FIU run out the shot clock. Taylor missed a three-pointer with the shot clock winding down as DeJuan Wright saw the rebound bobble out of his hands go right to Raymond Taylor of FAU, who was immediately fouled by Gary.
Taylor would make both free throws and with 14 seconds left to cut the lead back to one with FIU ready to inbound.
Before FIU could inbound the ball, the Owls decided to foul Gary and send him to the line for two.
Gary, a 66 percent shooter from the charity stripe, missed both free throws. Off the second miss, FAU’s Alex Tucker took the ball the length of the court and found Brett Royster for an easy layup giving them Owls their only lead of the game.
FIU’s last chance – a DeJuan Wright full court heave – was not to be, as the Golden Panthers once again let a game that they could have won get away from them.
Free throws hurt them the most as they shot 11 out of 18 in the game. Even though after the game Royster was quoted saying it was the loudest the arena has been all year, Thomas did not make that an excuse for the poor performance.
“I’d like to tell you that it played a big role, but we’ve been in places where the crowd wasn’t as noisy and we missed them then,” Thomas said.
“I’m sure that it’s going to a very difficult loss for FIU and Isiah [Thomas] because they had this game and outplayed us for 39 minutes,” FAU coach Mike Jarvis said. “I give them a ton of credit for the way they tried to win this game.”
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