MEN'S BASKETBALL

Roster  |  Coaches  |  Schedule / Results  |  News

BUFFALO, NY - Freshman J.R. VanHoose scored a career-high 34 points and added a career-best 17 rebounds to lead Marshall to a 73-63 win over Buffalo in a Mid-American Conference battle at Alumni Arena on Wednesday night.

VanHoose scored 22 of his 34 points in the second half and took over after a strong effort by Buffalo (4-23, 0-16). The Bulls trailed 51-46 with 8:56 remaining when VanHoose netted 12 straight points to increase the margin to nine points (65-56) with 3:01 remaining. Marshall improved to 16-9 overall and 11-6 in the MAC.

Buffalo played a strong first half, trailing 39-33, despite shooting 50% from the field. The Bulls were led by sophomore Louis Campbell (Rahway, NJ/Rahway) who netted 22 points on 10-of-18 shooting. Maliso Libomi (Malakoff, France) added 11 points for UB while Alexei Vasiliev (St. Petersburg, Russia) had 10. Senior center Nate Johnson (O'Fallon, IL/O'Fallon) matched his career-high with 10 rebounds.

VanHoose was so dominant that his point guard Cornelius Jackson (12 points, six assists) started calling his number on his own down the stretch.

"We were coming down and coach was telling us to slow it down and I looked at "Corny" and he was calling the play telling us not look at him,"said VanHoose with a laugh recalling a three-point play in the second half. "Corny's a great point guard, he knows when to throw you the ball."

"Not taking anything away from Buffalo but it's kind of hard to come in here and get pumped up," said Jackson. "Some guys looked at their record and thought they were pushovers but Buffalo came out tough tonight."

"They had us down by one at halftime at our place," added VanHoose, "they're not a bad team and coach showed us a couple of close ones they lost. I think we picked it up towards the end of the game, we knew what was on the line. We're just trying to get a tournament seed at home."

"This is a hard game to play our kids knew their record and emotionally no matter what you tell them they know they're playing a club that hasn't won in the league," said Marshall coach Greg White. "This is our third straight win in the MAC and we made the plays and the free throws when we needed to."

"J.R. is just so quick with the ball once he gets an inch of opening to the rim it's in the basket before you can react," said White of VanHoose. "He does what he's good at, nothing more or nothing less. We've been saying the ball has to go through him and that's what we did tonight."

"He killed us. He just wore us down," said Buffalo coach Tim Cohane. "Those are the type of post players that make everybody better. I thought it was a real sustained effort by us tonight, whereas the first time we played them we only lasted 25 minutes."

" I have no complaints with my team they played hard and I think they're looking upon this as a great opportunity to get ready for next year," said Cohane.