Plucky Pirates fall short to Duke

From electronic and staff reports
©2013 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

DURHAM — East Carolina gave Duke a competitive effort in an 83-74 loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Tuesday night in the second round of the NIT Tip-Off Tournament.

"Don't undersell what they did," Duke coach Mike Kryzewski said. "We were ready and we played hard. I thought we brought great energy, but so did they. This was a really good basketball game."

Duke, ranked No. 6 nationally, was led by the first-year tandem of Rodney Hood, a sophomore transfer from Mississippi State, who had 30 points, and freshman Jabari Parker, who finished with 21 points, nine rebounds and six blocked shots.

Hood was eight for 10 from the field and dropped all 12 of his free throws. Hood also credited ECU's performance.

"They're a great team," said the Duke captain. "They've got a lot of talent, especially for a mid-major. They played hard. They weren't scared."

The Pirates trailed by as many as 18 points in the first half but managed to trim the lead to a point with seven minutes to go.

Prince Williams led ECU with 15 points and six assists.

Akeem Richmond and Antonio Robinson had 13 points each for the Pirates. Paris Roberts-Campbell had 11 points and a team-high eight rebounds before fouling out.

ECU had a 37-34 rebounding advantage.

Brandan Stith had six points, seven rebounds and blocked three shots in the setback. Marshall Guilmette had six points in seven minutes. Caleb White and Michael Zangari each had five points.

Pirates coach Jeff Lebo said his team needs to take the positives from the effort against the traditionally-powerful Blue Devils and move forward.

"We can draw a lot from this," Lebo said "Our kids playing in this stage, this environment — we don't get a chance to do that too often.

"We draw a lot of positives and when we watch the tape, I think we'll get some confidence from that. ... We've got to be able to build on it. We can't say, `Hey, we played well and we're done for the year."'

Both teams exited with 4-1 records. ECU had a nine-game winning streak halted that dated back to the end of the 2012-13 season when the Pirates won the CollegeInsider.com Tournament championship.

PAGE UPDATED 11/20/13 03:44 AM.

Copyright © Bonesville.net. All rights rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any fashion. Information from Bonesville staff members, East Carolina University, Conference USA and other sources was used in composing and/or compiling the articles and data on this site. This site is editorially independent and is not affiliated with East Carolina University or Conference USA. View Bonesville.net's privacy policy. For advertising or other information, e-mail editor@bonesville.net.