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Bucs rout Buffs in exhibition

By Kelly Hodge
Press Managing Sports Editor
khodge@johnsoncitypress.com

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East Tennessee State basketball fans may reasonably wonder where the points will come from this season, but there were no such concerns Tuesday night.

They came from everywhere.

The Bucs had six players score in double figures and raced away from Milligan College 113-61 in an exhibition game in Memorial Center. And that was with three players sitting out with injuries, including senior co-captain Mike Smith.

“We wanted to go out and win the game, and we did that,” said ETSU coach Murry Bartow. “Then we wanted to get everybody minutes, and I think everybody played at least 14. I was pleased with the effort.”

Freshman guard Sheldon Cooley burst on the scene with 19 points to match Micah Williams for team high. The Tampa, Fla., native is a long 6-foot-3 and showed a smooth and well-rounded game, once he got over the butterflies of playing in his first college game.

“I was a little nervous before the game,” said Cooley. “Once I got going, everything was OK.”

Bartow was admittedly a bit surprised by Cooley, who made 8 of 14 shots, with five rebounds and three steals.

“Cooley grows on you,” he said. “He’s not a wow guy, but tonight he kind of wowed me. He has a chance to be very good.”

For Williams, the junior guard, it was a solid performance with a lot of young guys in the mix. He hit 7 of 11 shots, grabbed seven rebounds and generally looked like a player the Bucs will count on heavily this season.

He admittedly missed the presence of Smith, who has a sore knee and sat out, along with Justin Tubbs (ankle) and J.C. Ward (foot).

“I’ve been playing with Mike so long,” said Williams, “it was weird not seeing him on the opposite wing. We need to get him back.”

Smith is likely to sit out most of practice this week. Tubbs, meanwhile, has been a day-to-day practice player and will hopefully be ready to suit up for the next exhibition, against Carson-Newman on Monday. Ward, a banger the team could use, is out for at least a couple of weeks.

The Bucs can afford their absence for now.

Against the outmanned Buffaloes, they had more than enough offense — 15 points from Adam Sollazzo, and 14 apiece from Tommy Hubbard, Isiah Brown and Lukas Poderis. Sollazzo grabbed 11 rebounds and Poderis, the 6-8 freshman, had 10 as the Bucs dominated the boards 59-32.

It was the third straight year the teams have played an exhibition game, and this one was the most lopsided. The score was 50-30 at the half and just got worse from there.

The Bucs were simply too athletic for an NAIA team with a new coach and a bunch of new players.

“We can’t practice that,” said Bill Robinson, making his public debut as Buffs coach. “We knew it would be hard to run our stuff, and we gave up on that about halfway through the second half. We just tried to make plays and compete.

“That first group East Tennessee had out there was very athletic, very quick. We could throw seven or eight guys out there in practice and it still wouldn’t be the same.”

The Buffs were led by freshman point guard Justin Sylvester, with 16 points. Cordero Seymour, a junior forward, added 11.

Milligan opens its season this weekend in a tournament at Shorter College.

Despite their margin of victory, the Bucs left themselves room for improvement in a few areas. Most alarmingly, they committed 27 fouls and saw three players disqualified.

Brown was gone with more than eight minutes left, and Bruce Grimm and Jocolby Davis would soon follow.

“We wanted to play hard for 40 minutes,” said Bartow. “We’re a defensive-oriented team and we press a lot and get after it. But we had a lot of dumb fouls tonight. We can’t do that on a nightly basis.”

The Bucs were also so-so at the foul line, making 28 of 46 (61 percent). They shot 53 percent from the field.