Temple wins on ECU's Senior Night

By Al Myatt
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GREENVILLE — Temple overcame a fast start by East Carolina on Senior Night to take a 70-56 American Athletic Conference win over the Pirates in Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum on Thursday night.

A 3-pointer by Terry Whisnant gave ECU an 11-3 lead with 17:14 left in the first half, but the Owls (21-9, 12-5 AAC) rallied to go ahead to stay, 30-27, on a 3-pointer by Will Cummings with 5:20 left in the first half.

Cummings finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and six assists.

Caleb White led ECU (13-17, 6-11) with 13 points, seven rebounds and three assists.

Whisnant finished with nine points. Michel Nzege and freshman B.J. Tyson each added eight points for the Pirates.

"We lost to a really outstanding basketball team, an NCAA tournament team, tonight," said Pirates coach Jeff Lebo. "We had our chances, but didn't shoot it really well from the foul line or from three. We made four threes to start the game and we ended with six."

ECU made 21 of 51 field goal attempts for 46.2 percent, six of 21 threes for 28.6 percent and eight of 15 free throws for 53.3 percent.

"We need to shoot the ball a lot better," Lebo said. "We had chances and they only shot 33 percent (12 for 36) in the second half, but we just couldn't capitalize. We couldn't get (shots) to go down consistently for us in the second half."

The Pirates were nine for 25 from the floor after intermission (36 percent).

Temple extended its lead from two points to 41-33 over the last two minutes of the first half. ECU trimmed a 12-point Owls lead to 54-49 with 13:10 to go on a layup by Antonio Robinson.

Paris Roberts-Campbell, Robinson and Francis Edosomwan were recognized as seniors and all three started.

Robinson injured a knee on a second half drive but contributed five assists and five rebounds. Roberts-Campbell had six points in 17 minutes.

Marshall Guilmette grabbed six rebounds for the Pirates.

ECU plays at Houston on Sunday at 4 p.m. (ESPNews) to complete the regular season. The Pirates topped the Cougars in Greenville by a 66-61 margin on Jan. 14.

Houston won 68-63 over host Tulane in overtime on Wednesday to improve to 11-18 overall and 3-14 in the AAC.

PAGE UPDATED 03/06/15 04:04 AM.

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