Longwood head coach Jayson Gee told his team at halftime they couldn’t win without rebounding the basketball. Unfortunately, UNC Asheville got the same message.
Sophomore forward Giacomo Zilli scored 16 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in the second half to lead UNC Asheville (12-11, 8-4 Big South) to a 71-56 comeback win over Longwood Friday evening in Kimmel Arena. Zilli was the difference after the break, grabbing eight offensive rebounds to help the Bulldogs score 17 second-chance points and overcome a 10-point halftime deficit.
“His physicality, his toughness, his size and strength, we just couldn’t hold him off the boards,” Gee said of Zilli, who finished with career highs of 16 points and 14 rebounds. “I told our team, if you can’t rebound, you can’t win this game. I have to give credit to number 21. He just single-handedly willed them into some great, great rebounds. Hats off to him.”
The 6-9, 255-pound Zilli set the stage early in the second half, grabbing three offensive rebounds in UNC Asheville’s first two possessions of the half. Those three possessions translated to second-chance buckets on both trips down the court and sparked a 13-4 run that erased Longwood’s halftime lead. Zilli’s eight offensive rebounds in the second half led directly to eight second-chance points and matched the Lancers’ rebound total on their own glass. Zilli’s second-half surge came after an ineffective first half in which he went scoreless with just two boards while Longwood took ownership of the paintt.
During his first-half absence, the Lancers (7-18, 3-9 Big South) shot 56.5 percent (13-of-23) and outscored the Bulldogs 16-4 in the paint to stake a 33-23 lead. Shaquille Johnson scored 12 of his 19 points during that opening run, while Leron Fisher orchestrated that offensive sonata with six assists and seven points. But Longwood hit a cold spell coming out of the break, and when the shots stopped falling, Zilli and the Bulldogs went to work on the boards.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well,” Gee said. “Our guys relied on too many jump shots. They were open, but our bread-and-butter is getting the ball to the basket.”
The size of Zilli and 7-0 center Jaleel Roberts forced the Lancers out of the gameplan that served them so well in the first half. Longwood shot just 7-of-28 (.250) from the field in the second half and was forced to settle for jumpers outside the paint as Roberts, who racked up three second-half blocks, almost single-handedly erased the Lancers’ driving lanes to the basket.
It wasn’t until the final five minutes when Quincy Taylor scored seven of his 19 points that the Lancers found a semblance of the momentum that carried them through the first half.
“The only thing I can tell you is we have to rebound the ball,” Gee said. “There were some big men in there who rebounded the ball, and we had nothing to fight them off with. We have to take pride in being a tough, undersized group of guys. We just didn’t get that done tonight.”
Despite the loss, Longwood is still in the hunt for a top-eight seed in the Big South Tournament. The Lancers have six games left to make their run, beginning Wednesday at Radford.
“We just have to find an answer,” Gee said. “We have to hold the fort down until our front-line guy comes back. We can’t complain about what we don’t have. The reality is, this is who we are. I’ve said this down the stretch: we have enough. We just have to have miraculous efforts out of some of our big guys.”
Against Radford, Longwood will have a chance to duplicate one those efforts from earlier this season when the Lancers outlasted a bigger Radford team 90-79 in double overtime on Jan. 3. The rematch will tip off at 7 p.m. in Radford, Va.
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