Feb. 24, 2007
Final Stats | Quotes | Notes
Contact: Brian McCann
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Senior Raheem Moss made the most out of his final game in the Wolstein Center by scoring a game-high 21 points to lead Cleveland State past Youngstown State, 68-55.
Moss, who was one of six Viking seniors who were honored as part of Senior Night, recorded his third 20-point game of the season to help Cleveland State (10-20, 3-13) split the season series with Youngstown State for the second straight year.
J'Nathan Bullock added 11 points and eight rebounds with Bahaadar Russell chipping in with 11 points and four steals. Byron Davis led YSU with 15 points while Jack Liles added 14 and John Barber 11.
After giving up second half leads in two of the last three games, the Vikings used an 11-0 run late in the first half to open up a tie game and take control of the contest.
"I thought that this was something that was long overdue," head coach Gary Waters said. "Our young men have been working hard. We came in wanting to do three things today: win for seniors, show people here where the program is headed and prepare for the conference tournament. I thought we did all of those things."
"The thing I think this team has been lacking is to finish games in the right manner. We did that tonight. I thought we've played good basketball our last three games but we just kind of ran out of steam late. That didn't happen tonight.
YSU's Quin Humphrey, who was coming off a 35 point effort in the Penguins win over Wright State on Thursday, was held to just eight points, his second-lowest scoring output of the season.
"We knew we had to take him away, so we did a box-and-one on him and Joe Davis and Victor Morris did a great job on him," Waters said. "It definitely made it easier when Roberts went out (with an injury). Our plan was to try and shut Humphrey down because we wanted to make other guys beat us. Every time that Humphrey has gone off and scored a lot of points, Youngstown State has won. We needed to avoid that."
The first half belonged to CSU as the Vikings trailed just three times, and never by more than two points.
Patrick Tatham opened the scoring with a three-pointer just 34 seconds into the game and Bullock followed with a basket inside to give CSU a 5-0 lead. Youngstown State rallied to take 8-7 and 10-9 leads,
Five straight points from Moss and a basket inside from Renard Fields allowed the Vikings to regain the lead, 19-14 with 10:36 left but Byron Davis scored five points during a 7-0 YSU run that put the Penguins ahead, 21-19 with 8:19 left.
That would be the final lead for YSU as Tatham would tie it on a baseline jumper and Fields quickly followed with a basket inside to put CSU ahead for good, 23-21 with 6:45 left.
YSU would even the game at 26-26 on a Davis trey with 4:22 left, but CSU ran off 11 straight points, eventually taking a 37-27 lead to the locker room.
The senior class was responsible for most of the run as Moss scored five points and Morris two during the spurt.
The Vikings refused to let Youngstown State back into the contest. The Penguins closed to within 44-39 with 13:00 left before CSU went on a 12-2 run to put the contest away. Moss keyed the run with five points while Russell added four points.
CSU did another outstanding job of taking care of the ball, matching its season-low by committing just eight turnovers. It was the sixth time in the last nine games that the Vikings made 10 or fewer turnovers.
Cleveland State opens play in the Horizon League Championship as the No. 9 seed, traveling to No. 4 UW-Green Bay on Tuesday (Feb. 27) for an 8:00 p.m. contest. A victory would advance CSU to a second round game that will at Wright State on Friday (March 2)
