Jan. 17, 2009

Box Score

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The Samford University basketball team improved its home record to 7-1 on Saturday as the Bulldogs earned a 68-56 Southern Conference victory against the Appalachian State Mountaineers. In the win, Samford's Trey Montgomery scored a career-high 25 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the floor.

"Trey played a great game today and I think it can be attributed to his energy," said Samford head coach Jimmy Tillette. "He's our hardest worker, our most vocal guy and a nice young man. He did a great job of bringing leadership in the second half and that was the key. This was a great win for us because it is definitely a night-and-day difference between being 3-4 and 2-5 in this league."

With Saturday's victory, Samford (8-8, 3-4 SoCon) concluded its two-game homestand with a 2-0 record. On Thursday, the Bulldogs picked up a 76-64 win against the Western Carolina Catamounts. Samford is now 3-1 against conference opponents when playing in the Pete Hanna Center.

Appalachian State (6-9, 3-4 SoCon) had its losing streak extended to four-straight games. Since beating Elon on Jan. 8, the Mountaineers have dropped consecutive games against UNC Greensboro, Davidson, Chattanooga and Samford.

Samford outscored Appalachian State 45-31 in the second half.

After only leading the Mountaineers 25-23 at the intermission, the Bulldogs rallied to shoot 52 percent from the field in the final period and were buoyed by Montgomery's 17 second-half points. The Bulldogs' 6-foot-4 guard from Destrehan, La., was 6-for-10 in the final period and helped spark a critical 14-2 run midway through the period.

With 9:30 remaining in the game, Appalachian State held a 44-41 advantage. Montgomery then scored nine of the Bulldogs' next 14 points to give Samford a 55-46 lead with 4:43 left to play.

Montgomery capped the 14-2 run with a thunderous two-handed dunk following one of his season-high four steals in the game. The Bulldogs finished the contest with eight steals and only nine turnovers, while the Mountaineers only tallied five takeaways and coughed the ball up 17 times.

"I was able to get the steal and I just wanted to finish it the best way I could," said Montgomery on his roof-raising dunk in the second half. "I thought that it really brought the team's intensity level up a notch and it really helped get the crowd involved. That stretch was a huge boost for us and I think it was a key period in the game."

Down the stretch, Appalachian State used a deep 3-pointer from Jeremi Booth to trim Samford's lead to 55-52, but then the Bulldogs ended play with eight free throws, a huge 3-pointer from Andy King and a back-door layup from Montgomery.

Samford shot 15-of-18 from the free-throw line as Montgomery led the way with a 5-of-6 performance. The Bulldogs' sophomore guard Josh Bedwell, the leading free-throw shooter in the conference, upped his near-perfect percentage to 92.1 with a 4-for-4 outing. So far this season, Bedwell has made 35 of his 38 attempts from the charity stripe.

"Free throws have been crucial for us this season," Montgomery said. "We lost a game earlier this year because we missed our free throws down the stretch and since then we've really been working on them. We work on our free-throw shooting every day in practice and we know that it can be the difference between a win and a loss."

Samford finished the game with three players scoring in double figures.

After Montgomery's career-high 25 points, sophomore guard Josh Davis added 11 points, four assists and three steals, while King tallied 10 points and four rebounds. King, the Bulldogs' 6-foot-8 center from Omaha, Neb., finished 3-of-6 from beyond the arc.

Appalachian State was led in scoring by sophomore guard Donald Sims. A 6-foot-1 native of Gaffney, S.C., Sims tallied 14 points on 5-of-10 shooting from the floor and was 4-of-9 from 3-point range. He was also the only person in the game to play all 40 minutes.

The Mountaineers' Donterious Hughes was the only other Appalachian State player to score in double figures. He finished with 10 points on 5-of-8 shooting from the field.

Samford's Bryan Friday registered seven points, two rebounds and a pair of assists, while Bedwell added six points and Curtis West chipped in with five.

Davis led the Bulldogs with five rebounds, but Samford was out-rebounded by Appalachian State 32-23. The Mountaineers entered the game as the top rebounding team in the SoCon and were ranked ninth in the nation in rebounding margin (+7.5).

"We really picked it up in the second half and one of the most telling stats was how they out-rebounded us on the offensive glass in the first half," Tillette said. "They had nine offensive rebounds in the first half and we didn't have any. In the second half, we finished with five and they only had two. That was a big difference in the game and it can be attributed to our guys' hustle and grit."

The Samford University basketball team will next be in action Thursday at 6 p.m. (CST) as the Bulldogs look to extend their current two-game winning streak with a SoCon matchup against the Elon Phoenix. The contest will be played at Elon's Alumni Gym in Elon, N.C.