FAU Men’s Basketball Outlasts Rice

HOUSTON, Texas – (Jan. 9, 2020) – The Florida Atlantic University men’s basketball improved to 3-0 in Conference USA play with an 81-76 victory over Rice on Thursday night. FAU is now 11-5 overall on the season. 

How It Happened

FAU was able to consistently penetrate the Rice defense in the early going, scoring its first eight points of the game on layups. Later on in the half, FAU began to attack from the perimeter, making four 3-pointers in four and a half minutes, stretching its lead to nine, 22-13, in the process.


FAU’s advantage reached as many as a dozen in the period, but a Rice triple cut the FAU cushion to 40-31 at the half. 
 
Cornelius Taylor began the second half with a flurry of baskets, scoring FAU’s first 11 points, giving FAU a 52-33 lead. Michael Forrest nailed a 3-pointer that made the score 55-33. 
 
At that point, Rice began to chip away at the deficit, ultimately taking a 68-67 edge with 4:32 to play in the game. Forrest immediately responded with his fourth triple of the night, and Richardson Maitre quickly followed with a jumper from the top of the key, allowing FAU to retake the lead, 72-68. 
 
Rice pulled to within one, 72-71, but as he had early in the half, Taylor took over down the stretch, scoring seven of FAU’s final nine points, to secure the win. 

Notables

  • Taylor had 34 points, including going 7-of-10 from three-point range, to lead all scorers. He’s the first FAU player to score 30 points in a game since Forrest had 32 against Marshall on Jan. 17, 2019
  • Forrest scored 12 points, all of them coming on 3-pointers
  • Big men Aleksandar Zecevic and Darden Kapiti came off the bench to score 10 points each. Zecevic added eight rebounds
  • Maitre just missed a double-double with nine points and a career-high eight rebounds
  • FAU made 12 3-pointers on the night, improving to 7-0 on the year when making at least nine in a game
  • The win evened the all-time series at four victories each
  • 11-5 is FAU’s best season start at the Division I level 
  • FAU is 3-0 in conference play for the first time since 2010-11, when it was in the Sun Belt Conference

Quotables

FAU Head Coach Dusty May
“Our guys really believe in each other and they know that somebody’s going to step up.”


What’s Next
FAU finishes its road trip at North Texas on Saturday, Jan. 11. Tip-off is set for 4 p.m. Eastern. The game will be streamed on ESPN+. Live stats will be available at fausports.com. The game can be heard on FOX Sports 640AM. Live updates will be posted to the team’s official Twitter account, @FAU_Hoops.

– FAUSports.com –

Florida Atlantic University Athletics:

FAU Athletics is comprised of 21 intercollegiate teams involving 450 student-athletes that compete in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track, volleyball, beach volleyball, cheer and dance. The Owls are a NCAA Division I-A (FBS) institution and compete in Conference USA and the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA) (beach volleyball, men’s swimming). The Owls have been playing football since 2001 and are a perfect 3-0 in bowl games, the most recent being a 50-3 victory over Akron in the 2017 Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl. The dance team finished its 2014 season No. 8, nationally. FAU cheer won a national championship in 2016. 

About Florida Atlantic University:

Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.