The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB
Louisiana-Monroe
Blazers Fall To ULM In Season Opener, 74-65
11/15/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Postgame Notes | Postgame Quotes | Final Stats (PDF)
By Steve Irvine, UABSports.com
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- UAB men’s basketball head coach Jerod Haase won’t use his team’s youth as an excuse for a regular season-opening 74-65 loss to ULM on Saturday night at Bartow Arena. And he’s also not interested in waiting around for the Blazers to mature into a good team.
“Every season is going to have its ups and downs,” said Haase. “A tough, tough way to finish a game at home. To the core of me, I believe that we are going to be a good team and we’re going to be a good team this year. I talked to guys in the locker room, maybe I challenged them, about when is that going to happen. Hopefully, we can make it happen sooner, rather than later.”
Problems on both ends of the floor hindered the Blazers chance to win on Saturday night. UAB shot poorly in the first half – hitting 36.7 percent – from the field but committed just five turnovers. In the second half, UAB heated up to 46.2 percent from the field, including hitting 4-of-7 3-pointers, but got sloppy with the ball while committing 11 second half turnovers. On defense, the Blazers forced just two first-half turnovers and allowed too many easy buckets to a ULM team that capitalized on the mistakes.
“Offensively, the things we do in practice are not being carried over to the game,” Haase said. “I’m not going to talk about we’re a young team or anything like that because we’re the UAB team. We’re in this together, no matter what year you are or anything else, we all have to do this for each other. On the defensive end, there are a lot of mistakes. For our defense to only create two turnovers (in the first half), a real deficiency is going on there.”
ULM led for all but the first 2 minutes and 18 seconds of the game. The Warhawks led, 33-25, at halftime and built the advantage to as many as 15 points in the second half. But the Blazers made things interesting at several points after halftime.
The Warhawks built a 44-33 lead with just under 15 minutes left in the game before the Blazers scored six consecutive points on a Denzell Watts’ 3-pointer, a free throw by Chris Cokley and a driving shot by Tyler Madison. ULM stopped the run with a steal and layup by Tylor Ongwae but UAB crawled within 46-43 with 9:25 left after back-to-back buckets by C.J. Washington and Madison. But ULM followed with a 14-5 run over the next four minutes.
“We played some zone and it was effective,” Haase said. “But every time we did make a run, we would not box out, have a silly turnover or shoot ourselves in the foot.”
ULM held down the stretch – partly thanks to a trio of 3-pointers by point guard Nick Coppola.
UAB has to regroup quickly with Young Harris College coming to Bartow Arena on Monday night for a 7 p.m CT tip.
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