Nov. 24, 2010

Box Score

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The Samford University basketball team committed a season-high 21 turnovers Wednesday in a 60-49 home loss against the Jacksonville Dolphins in a non-conference matchup held at the Pete Hanna Center. The meeting was the first between the old Trans America Athletic Conference rivals since 2003 and it was Jacksonville's first victory in the series since Feb. 8, 2001.

"The turnovers were obviously an issue for us tonight and that's just what I got done telling the team," said Samford head coach Jimmy Tillette. "We made some defensive errors, but we also made a tremendous amount of mistakes on the offensive end of the floor. We didn't play well against their pressure and we finished with 21 turnovers, and they had 14 steals."

With Wednesday's loss, Samford (3-3) had its winning streak against Jacksonville (3-1) snapped at four games. The defeat was also the Bulldogs' first setback at home of the 2010-11 campaign.

The Dolphins extended their winning streak to three-consecutive games and will continue their Thanksgiving road trip with a 7 p.m. (CST) matchup at Auburn on Saturday.

Jacksonville used its full-court pressure defense to take an early lead of 10-4 with 12:36 to play in the first half. Samford then bounced back to lead by as many as three points, 25-22, with 1:23 remaining until the intermission.

The Bulldogs' Kaylin Johnson paced Samford with eight points in the first half and closed out the game with a career-high 15 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field. The Bulldogs' speedy guard from Baton Rouge, La., also knocked down a career-high four 3-point field goals and connected on three free throws.

Johnson's career-high scoring performance bested his previous high mark of 14 points scored against Georgia Southern on Feb. 22, 2010.

"Kaylin is certainly playing better," Tillette said. "He still needs to get better at some things and it was inexplicable to us why he struggled so much early on because he was practicing so well. He was on the verge of starting, but he backed up a bit until now he's really starting to play a lot better."

The Dolphins used a late jumper from Travis Cohn and a driving layup from Shamile Jeffers to take a slight 26-25 advantage into halftime. Jacksonville rallied to end the opening period by scoring eight of the final 12 points of the half.

Samford was outscored 34-24 in the second half and trailed by 10 points, 49-39, with 3:38 remaining in the game. Following a steal by Drew Windler and a running layup by Gregg Wooten, the Bulldogs were able to cut Jacksonville's lead down to 49-44 with 2:26 to play.

The Dolphins' Keith McDougald then knocked down a key jumper and Jacksonville made nine free throws down the stretch to hold on for the 60-49 victory.

Russell Powell paced Jacksonville with 15 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field. The Dolphins' 5-foot-9 sophomore from Newnan, Ga., also tallied two rebounds, two steals and an assist, but most importantly knocked down 7-of-8 of his free-throw attempts.

As a team, Jacksonville only shot 1-for-7 from 3-point range (14.3 percent) and 17-of-30 from the charity stripe (56.7 percent). Samford wasn't much better with an 18-of-28 outing from the free-throw line (64.3 percent).

"Obviously, we can't go 18-of-28 from the free-throw line, we can't go 5-of-21 from the arc and we can't commit 21 turnovers and expect to win the game," Tillette said. "The strength of Jacksonville's team is their defense. They do a great job of scoring off their defense and that's how they beat people."

The Dolphins' double-digit scoring performers were rounded out by 12 points from Huffman High School product Ayron Hardy and 10 points from Cohn.

Samford only shot 31.7 percent from the field (13-of-41) and 23.8 percent from 3-point range (5-of-21). After Johnson's four 3-point field goals, senior Andy King connected on the Bulldogs' fifth deep shot of the game. He finished with five points, two assists and a rebound.

"We were able to get some wide open shots, but it was like we were so frazzled that we couldn't make any because we sped up the offense," said Tillette. "We were in the wrong spots at the wrong times and that's what their pressure is designed to do. We know right now that our guards that handle the basketball did not do a good job. That's our issue and that's a large part of why we scheduled these games.

Junior Jeffrey Merritt came one point shy of recording his third double-double this season. The Bulldogs' native of Oklahoma City, Okla., pulled down a game-high 11 rebounds and finished with nine points, an assist and a steal. Merritt was also 5-of-6 from the free-throw line, but only 2-of-7 from the floor.

Samford's Wooten added a career-high 13 points on 5-of-8 shooting from the field. The Bulldogs' native of Memphis, Tenn., grabbed four rebounds and scored on a number of acrobatic layups down the right side of the lane.

"I thought Gregg did some positive things tonight," said Tillette. "He needs to get better at his free-throw shooting, but that goes for the whole team as well. We'll also need to get better at taking care of the ball, especially because Georgia State plays a lot like Jacksonville, and we knew that when we scheduled these games. These matchups are what we need, and as ugly as it looks, we believe it will make us better in the long run."

The Samford University basketball team will next be in action Saturday at 6:30 p.m. (CST) as the Bulldogs travel to Atlanta, Ga., for a non-conference matchup versus the Georgia State Panthers to be held at the Georgia State Sports Arena (3,400).