{"id":38018,"date":"2015-12-14T11:44:22","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T16:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=38018"},"modified":"2015-12-14T11:44:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T16:44:22","slug":"tuckers-game-winning-and-1-finish-gives-fgcu-men-victory-over-umass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/12\/tuckers-game-winning-and-1-finish-gives-fgcu-men-victory-over-umass\/","title":{"rendered":"Tucker\u2019s Game-Winning And-1 Finish Gives FGCU Men Victory Over UMass"},"content":{"rendered":"

By BILL LEVY<\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo by Captive Photons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With many of the 3,049 fans in attendance at\u00a0Sunday’s\u00a0FGCU men’s basketball game at the Alico Arena rooting for visiting UMASS, Eagles guard Rayjon Tucker played the role of either Santa or the Grinch, depending on who they were rooting for. His driving basket and subsequent free throw with 10.6 seconds left in regulation gave FGCU (6-4)\u00a0a thrilling 77-76 victory over the Minutemen.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to get one of my teammates a good shot,” Tucker said. “Whether it was myself, or a teammate. The man backed down and I took it to the basket.”<\/p>\n

While the field goal tied the game at 76, Tucker still had to connect on the free throw to give FGCU the lead.<\/p>\n

“You should make free throws,” Tucker said. “They are free. I have confidence.”<\/p>\n

FGCU however may have not gotten to that position however if not for the efforts of Marc-Eddy Norelia who scored 18 of his game high 20 points in the first half, as FGCU went into halftime leading 42-37.<\/p>\n

Though FGCU had the lead the first half, things were different the next half, as the score was tied five times and the lead changed four times, as the Minutemen (5-4)\u00a0focused more on Norelia.<\/p>\n

“We were trying to crowd him more,” UMASS Coach Derek Kellogg said. “We were really trying to dig in.”<\/p>\n

Eagles coach Joe Dooley acknowledged both the contributions of Norelia and Tucker.<\/p>\n

“(Norelia) carried us early on,” he said, “and Rayjon save us late.”<\/p>\n

While noting both teams may have given the fans an early holiday gift, Dooley said there is still room for the Eagles to improve.<\/p>\n

“I thought it was a really good college basketball game,” he said. “(This season) we have been really good in spurts and really bad. We need to not have as many peaks and valleys.”<\/p>\n

Kellogg meanwhile, admitted that this will be a\u00a0difficult game to get over.<\/p>\n

“This is a tough game to swallow,” he said. “A lot of things didn’t go our way. It was like this at our last game (a 67-63 loss to the University of Central Florida on December 8) but this is worse. I will talk to our players to let them know we can’t make a habit of this. I will\u00a0keep going to Mass.”<\/p>\n

Sounds like the Grinch may have stolen his Christmas.<\/p>\n

NOTES: Among those in attendance was US Congressman Curt Clawson from District 19. FGCU’s Christian Terrell, who had 14 points against UMASS, has now scored in double digits the past four games. The Eagles next game is not until\u00a0Saturday\u00a0at\u00a05 PM\u00a0when they host South Dakota State.<\/p>\n

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By BILL LEVY With many of the 3,049 fans in attendance at\u00a0Sunday’s\u00a0FGCU men’s basketball game at the Alico Arena rooting for visiting UMASS, Eagles guard Rayjon Tucker played the role… <\/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\/38018"}],"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=38018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}