Liberty extended its home winning streak to 39 games with a 73-61 win over Maryland Eastern Shore, Saturday afternoon at Liberty Arena.
Liberty improves to 3-3 this season while UMES drops to 2-3.
The Flames led by as many as 15 in the first half, but the Hawks got back to eight, at 39-31, at the break.
Maryland Eastern Shore was able to cut into Liberty’s lead early in the second half, as the Hawks trailed by three points (45-42) with 16:47 left, and it was at one (50-49) with 12:33 left.
Liberty quickly responded with a 6-2 run to give the Flames some breathing room and was able to bring its leads back to double-digits as the game went along, pulling out the victory.
Darius McGhee scored a game-high 19 points for Liberty, and Keegan McDowell scored 16 points.
“I knew going in that this was going to be a tough one,” Liberty coach Ritchie McKay said. “I watched Maryland Eastern Shore play great against St. Joseph’s, Temple and Fordham and even played decent against Campbell so I knew we were in for a game. Not the typical early season game that you play a school you think you can just win and we told our guys this will be a really competitive game because they won’t quit, so I was really proud of our group. The second half we had a defensive consistency towards the end there that looked more like ourselves.”
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