Concord Moves onto the Championship Game Against WV Tech in the Currence Classic

Photo from Bluefield Daily Telegraph Online, Staff photo by Eric DiNovo
BLUEFIELD (BDT- Jed Lockett)— Freshman Chance Smith came off the bench and put on a show. He made seven of his eight field goal attempts and all five of his shots from three-point range to lead the Concord University Mountain Lions to a 74-60 win over the Bluefield State Big Blues in the second game of the Currence Classic at Ned Shott Gymnasium Friday night.

“I felt like there's good and bad,” said Concord head coach Steve Cox. “I felt like the first half, we got off to a decent start but then we kind of struggled.

“I thought just our overall depth — our freshman kids came in and played great. Chance Smith, Rocky Smith, Lemond Lee gave us real good play off the bench. It was a decent win. I think we've played better but we're glad to get it.”

“We did everything we could do to take ourselves out of the game and not give ourselves a chance to win the game,” said Bluefield State head coach Don Jones.

“We didn't protect the ball, a lot of bad shots, we just didn't do the things we needed to do to stay in with a team like Concord that was going to be very disciplined on offense and come at you hard defensively.”

Smith scored 12 of his 19 points in the second half, all coming from shots beyond the arc.

“He's really been a pleasant surprise,” Cox said. “He played really well for us down at Belmont Abbey. He came in that game and just defensively and his overall hustle and floor game, he's a smart kid out there. The nice thing tonight is he got some open looks and he knocked 'em down.”

Dannie Parker scored 16 points for Concord and led the team with seven rebounds. Anthony Lansdowne added 14 points for the Mountain Lions, making six of his nine field goal attempts and two of his five shots from three-point range. Rustin Jessee only scored two points, but had 10 assists.

Mario Thompson led Bluefield State with 14 points. Howard Coston , Rico Thompson, and Shannon Thomas each contributed 11 for a team that is determined not to let a lack in numbers be their downfall.

“In an average game, you're only going to play 8-9 guys anyway,” Jones said. “For us, we have to get better execution out of kids that we're playing. I don't think they wore us down. In fact, they were tired. We just kept climbing the hill.

“We let 'em get away and we reel 'em back in and right there when we feel like we can make a play to maybe change the game around, we do something stupid and they go down and capitalize.”

Concord (2-0) will play West Virginia Tech in the Currence Classic finale tonight at 8 p.m. after the Golden Bears beat Tusculum in the first game of the evening 66-63.

“I think basketball teams, you've just got to keep trying to get better,” Cox said. “If you don't get better, then usually you're backsliding and we don't want to backslide.

“We think we can do a little better job defensively. We had some breakdowns tonight, gave up drives, and also maybe some foolish fouls that we didn't need to commit. This is a young group, but this is an enjoyable group to work with. So we're just going to try to get better.”

Bluefield State (0-2) will host Tusculum in the Currence Classic third-place game tonight at 6 p.m.

“It's going to be a tough game,” Jones said. “The focus is we desperately need to come out and play 40 minutes of good basketball. We have yet to do that. We've had spurts that we've played well. But we need to put together 40 minutes of basketball.

“That means running our offense, being aggressive on defense, and the biggest thing is taking care of the ball. We just don't do a good job of taking care of the ball.”

In the preceding game, West Virginia Tech was led by Brent Butler's 26 points. Butler went 3-for-4 from outside the arc and 7-for-8 from the charity stripe. Sam Robertson added 12 points to the Golden Bears' cause.

Jordan Lear led the Pioneers in the loss with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Lavonti Jeter put up 17 and Kyle Moore added 10.
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