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Redshirt senior\u00a0Jamail Jones\u00a0<\/strong>scored a career-high 25 points to carry the FGCU men’s basketball team (18-7, 8-1 Atlantic Sun Conference) to its seventh-straight win, 65-59, at Northern Kentucky (10-14, 4-5 A-Sun) Thursday night to move into sole possession of first place in the A-Sun.<\/p>\n The seventh-straight victory ties a Division-I program record for the longest winning streak, and FGCU received the win it needed at home from USC Upstate, 80-63, over North Florida to propel into first place alone atop the league ledger.<\/p>\n Jones (Atlanta, Ga.\/Montverde Academy\/Marquette)\u00a0<\/strong>shot an extremely efficient 10-11 from the floor, and scored seven consecutive points late in the contest to keep the Norse at bay.Brett Comer (Winter Park, Fla.\/Winter Park HS)\u00a0<\/strong>tallied 11 points and issued a game-high seven assists as the senior finished as FGCU’s only other double-figure scorer.<\/p>\n Despite that, Comer moved into sole possession of second place on FGCU’s career scoring list as the point guard now has 1,371. He trails only teammate\u00a0Bernard Thompson (Conyers, Ga.\/Rockdale County HS)\u00a0<\/strong>with 1,727, who – despite playing just 21 foul-limited minutes – tallied six points on the evening but finished with a game-high-tying and season-best 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n With FGCU’s lead – which at one point in the first half was 10 on multiple occasions – trimmed to only one, 53-52, with less than five minutes remaining, Jones hit two free throws, a pull-up jumper and a 3-pointer on three-straight Eagles’ possessions to counter two NKU buckets and give the Green and Blue a 60-56 lead at the\u00a02:53\u00a0mark. A\u00a0Demetris Morant (Miami, Fla.\/Bishop Gorman HS\/UNLV)\u00a0<\/strong>free throw with\u00a01:33\u00a0left pushed the lead to five, 61-56, before a final hectic closing minute.<\/p>\n NKU’s Todd Johnson hit a 3-pointer with 57 seconds showing to trim the Norse deficit to two, 61-59. On the ensuing FGCU trip, Comer drove, missed his shot, got his own rebound and fed Jones underneath for a layup with 22 seconds remaining to shove the advantage back to four, 63-59. A Thompson steal on NKU’s next possession set up a\u00a0Julian DeBose (Washington, D.C.\/St. John College HS\/Rice)\u00a0<\/strong>two-handed dunk to cap the game with an explanation point as the Eagles defeated the Norse for the sixth time in their six all-time meetings.<\/p>\n “We got off to a good start, and it ended up being a little bit of a grinder at the end,” said FGCU head coach\u00a0Joe Dooley<\/strong>. “The guys withstood a couple runs, played through foul trouble and didn’t particularly rebound the ball well, but Jamail stepped up big and made some huge shots to will us to that win.”<\/p>\n After allowing NKU to shoot 48.3 percent (14-29) from the floor in the first half, FGCU’s league-leading defense clamped down in the second stanza and limited the Norse to just a 29.6-percent clip (8-27). FGCU – which entered the contest with the nation’s third-best 3-point percentage defense at just .260 – lowered that again as it held the Norse to 25 percent from beyond the arc (6-24).<\/p>\n Tayler Persons led the NKU scoring attack with 19 points, while Tyler White added 13 and Jordan Jackson contributed 11 off the bench. Jalen Billups – who ranks fourth in the nation in field-goal percentage at 68.9 – connected on 4-5 shots and finished with nine points and 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n Three of the 10 rebounds came on the offensive end as NKU out-rebounded FGCU on the offensive glass, 12-10. The Eagles had recorded at least 13 offensive rebounds and 12 second-chance points in each of their eight A-Sun games entering the contest, but finished with only six second-chance points against the Norse.<\/p>\n With five A-Sun regular-season games remaining, FGCU holds a one-game lead over North Florida (15-11, 7-2 A-Sun) and a two-game edge over USC Upstate (19-7, 6-3 A-Sun) as the Spartans have now won six in a row. Lipscomb (11-13, 5-4 A-Sun) is alone in fourth place, followed by NKU in fifth, Kennesaw State (9-17, 3-6 A-Sun) in sixth, Stetson (8-17, 2-7 A-Sun) in seventh and Jacksonville (7-19, 1-8 A-Sun) in last.<\/p>\n FGCU, ranked No. 18 in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Poll, will look to complete another weekend A-Sun road trip when it travels to Nashville to take on Lipscomb\u00a0Saturday at 5:30 p.m. (EST). The Bisons snapped a four-game losing streak with an 87-85 win at home over Stetson\u00a0on Thursday\u00a0night.<\/p>\n GAME NOTES:\u00a0<\/strong>FGCU now owns six-game winning streaks (or better) against four A-Sun members: NKU (6), Stetson (6), Upstate (6) and Kennesaw (7) … Comer surpassed 2005 graduate Ryan Hopkins (1,367) for second place … at 18-7, FGCU is off to its best start in the D-I era through 25 games, and the 8-1 A-Sun start is also the best in program history … additionally, with 18 victories FGCU owns more wins than any other D-I team in the state of Florida …\u00a0Nate Hicks\u00a0<\/strong>blocked three shots … Thompson (250 career steals) recorded three steals and now is just 10 thefts shy of setting the A-Sun career record for steals … FGCU shot 43.1 percent from the floor (22-51) … Jones posted his previous career high of 22 points versus Kennesaw State last February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Redshirt senior\u00a0Jamail Jones\u00a0scored a career-high 25 points to carry the FGCU men’s basketball team (18-7, 8-1 Atlantic Sun Conference) to its seventh-straight win, 65-59, at Northern Kentucky (10-14, 4-5 A-Sun)… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}