Hot Springs, AR (Sports Network) – Deric Hill scored 16 points as the fourth- seed FIU Panthers upset the top-seed Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, 61-57, in the Sun Belt Conference semifinals at Summit Arena.<\/p>\n
Cameron Bell added 15 points and Malik Smith tallied 14 for FIU (18-13) which will take on sixth-seed Western Kentucky in Monday’s title game.<\/p>\n
Shawn Jones tallied 17 points and Marcos Knight had a double-double of 13 points and 11 rebounds for Middle Tennessee (28-5) which had just a single loss in conference play during the regular season.<\/p>\n
FIU went into halftime leading 33-24 despite shooting 33.3 percent from the floor. Middle Tennessee trailed by collecting just eight field goals on 29.6 percent shooting.<\/p>\n
After the break the Blue Raiders improved to 44.8 percent shooting but couldn’t overcome the slow start as the Panthers netted 10-of-13 attempts from the free-throw line to hold on for the win.<\/p>\n
FIU had a 24-14 edge in points off turnovers while outscoring the Blue Raiders 21-9 from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
Final Score: Western Kentucky 58, Arkansas State 56<\/p>\n
Hot Springs, AR (Sports Network) – T.J. Price scored a game-high 24 points and had the game-winning layup to lead the sixth-seed Western Kentucky Hilltoppers into the Sun Belt Conference Tournament title game with a 58-56 win over the second-seed Arkansas State Red Wolves in the semifinals at Summit Arena.<\/p>\n
Brandon Harris added 11 points off the bench for Western Kentucky (19-15) which will take on fourth-seed FIU in Monday’s championship game.<\/p>\n
Trey Finn and Brandon Peterson each scored 10 points with Peterson also collecting 12 rebounds for Arkansas State (19-12).<\/p>\n
At half the Hilltoppers had a slim 28-26 lead after shooting just 31.3 percent from the field while the Red Wolves recorded just eight field goals on 12 fewer shot attempts.<\/p>\n
After the break the Hilltoppers shot at a 40 percent clip and hit 13-of-15 shots from the free-throw line but found themselves trailing 56-55 with under a minute to play. Price collected a steal with 19 seconds remaining and went the other way to sink a a layup that proved to be the deciding blow.<\/p>\n
Arkansas State was guilty of a game-high 18 turnovers. Western Kentucky outscored the Red Wolves, 22-16, in the paint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hot Springs, AR (Sports Network) – Deric Hill scored 16 points as the fourth- seed FIU Panthers upset the top-seed Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, 61-57, in the Sun Belt Conference semifinals at Summit Arena. Cameron Bell added 15 points and Malik Smith tallied 14 for FIU (18-13) which will take on sixth-seed Western Kentucky in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncaa-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}