UNCW guard Ty Taylor finished with a game-high 23, but didn’t score until about four minutes remained in the first half. [Al Samuels/CofC Athletics Communications]
Bad defense led to bad offense. In the first half, it was that simple for UNCW men’s basketball against Charleston.
Through the opening 20 minutes of play, little seemed to go right for the Seahawks as they fell behind by 20. The team did manage to regroup for the second half, rallying to fall 80-76 against the Cougars. That finish would have been hard to imagine after the first stanza.
“Once you get some stops, you start having a little more pop offensively. If you see a shot go in, you have a little more pop on the defensive end. They go together,” UNCW coach C.B. McGrath said after the loss.
The Seahawks had as many turnovers (10) as made baskets (10) through the opening period. Meanwhile, Charleston shot nearly 55 percent from the field and three-point range, leading to a 17-point halftime lead.
UNCW’s woes were compounded by a lack of balance offensively. For much of the first half, Jordon Talley and Devontae Cacok were the bulk of the team’s offense, scoring 13 and 12 respectively. Cacok had to take a seat after picking up his second foul with 10:21 left in the period.
It took nearly 16 minutes for anyone else to score, as Ty Taylor’s 3-pointer with 4:18 left in the half gave UNCW its first points outside of those two. Jaylen Fornes hit a jumper about three minutes into the second half to give the Seahawks a fourth scorer in the game.
Eventually, UNCW got going as Taylor dropped a game-high 23, while Cacok added 20 and Talley had 18. The other three scorers combined for 15, all in the second half. The Seahawks also played significantly better on the defensive end, holding Charleston to 35.7 percent from the field over the final 20 minutes.
“It seemed like it finally clicked for us. We buckled down on both ends. We cut the lead obviously, but if we’d have done that just half of the first half, we could have pulled it out,” Taylor said.
Cacok’s presence
The difference between UNCW with and without Cacok was extremely clear on Thursday.
After picking up his second foul with 10:21 left in the half, the junior forward took a seat on the bench for the rest of the period. When he left the game, UNCW trailed by six. At half, the team was down 17 and had been down as many as 20.
Additionally, UNCW struggled to rebound the ball. Charleston won the first half battle 16-14 with the Seahawks grabbing just one offensive board. At halftime, Cacok had just one total rebound.
“He’s the nation’s leading rebounder and he’s very important to our rebounding. I told everybody before the game that rebounding had to be huge for us and it had to be team rebounding. We can’t just depend on Devontae,” McGrath said.
Over the next 20 minutes, Cacok helped the Seahawks turn things around. He finished with 13 rebounds, 12 of which came after the break and added eight more points. UNCW ended up winning the rebounding battle 39-31, with nine offensive boards in the second half.
Cacok was key during UNCW’s run that got game within two possessions. He grabbed three defensive rebounds that set up a 3-pointer from Ty Taylor and four free throw opportunities, cutting the deficit to five points with 3:36 to play.
“They had a very great player go on a two-minute run. I guess one of the top three players in our league. They have a great player over there. He was hard to guard and he made a few tough baskets around the rim and they made a few threes,” Charleston coach Earl Grant said of Cacok.
Defensive improvement
UNCW’s biggest change on defense in the second half? Attitude, according to McGrath.
“They were driving past us like we weren’t even there. They might take two dribbles, two or three steps before we even move. That’s just either lack of concentration, lack of effort, I didn’t know what it was,” McGrath said.
Through the first 20 minutes, Charleston went 17-of-31 from the field for 48 points. It’s the fifth most points UNCW has allowed in the first half this year.
Over the second half, the Cougars were limited to just 10-of-28 shooting and 32 points. McGrath’s halftime speech to the team wasn’t anything complicated.
“I just said, ‘You’ve got to show some pride in the second half. The season’s not even halfway over in conference and we’ve got a lot of games to play and if you don’t show some pride now, you’re never going to show pride. You can’t quit in anything you do, whether it’s basketball, life, you’ve got to battle back. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and just compete.’ And we did that,” he said.
–Reporter Alex Riley can be reached at 910-343-2034 or Alex.Riley@StarNewsOnline.com.
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