The FAU men’s basketball team began play under the bright lights of FAU Arena Tuesday night. The house was packed and the crowd acted as a sixth-man for the Owls in their exhibition game against Lynn University.
“The students picked up from where they left off last year,” said head coach Mike Jarvis. “I’m really proud of them.”
From the moment the ball was tossed up at center court to start the game, the student section was on their feet chanting and egging on the Fighting Knights. When the final seconds ticked off the clock as Raymond Taylor dribbled the ball just above the Owls logo, the crowd once again let out a roar of excitement. The Owls were victorious, 64-53.
It wasn’t easy, though, as Lynn went on a 10-0 run to close the second half and evened the score at 29 going into the locker room.
Some fans were panicking and wondering what was going on. After all, they were supposed to run away with this game, right?
Wrong.
“Honestly, I’d rather have had the score close,” said Jarvis. “The worst thing in the world for us tonight would have been for this to be a 30 or 40 point win. That’s why there were some crazy substitutions early in the first half.”
All 12 players that suited up for the Owls spent time on the court and the most minutes played was by Alex Tucker with only 14.
“Going into halftime with the score tied at 29-29, I was kind of pleased about the fact that we were going to have to come out and the score was going to be 0-0,” said Jarvis. “I think we got much more out of this because it was close.”
The fact that the game was close also kept the crowd involved. While Lynn was never too far behind on the scoreboard the Owls maintained a lead for most of the game.
“When we get defensive stops and the crowd goes wild, we kind of feed off their energy,” said senior guard Alex Tucker. “On defense we pride ourselves on using their energy to get more stops, to get more runs and to get more space between us and the opposing team.”
An Alex Tucker three put the Owls ahead 37-36 as the students went wild.
And on defense the Owls fed off of them.
After Lynn point guard Josh Garcia crossed half court, Tucker trapped him and Garcia was forced to try to get rid of the ball. Tucker tipped the ball in the air and then tipped the ball to guard Pablo Bertone who was running down the sideline.
The tipped pass was a little offline and in order for Bertone to save the ball he grabbed it, threw it in between his legs with his back to the basket to a streaking Greg Gantt who then layed the ball in and the Owls went ahead by 3.
The students went crazy this time — so did the rest of the arena in amazement of what they just saw.
“If this crowd had ever showed up to a game here five, six years ago, they probably would have had a parade,” said Jarvis. “We give the students a lot of props.”
At the end of the night it wasn’t a lights out performance for the Owls, who shot just 1-for-14 from three-point land. FAU now embarks on the daunting challenge of traveling across the country to Seattle to play four games in five days — all on the road and on opposite sides of the country (After Seattle, the Owls fly to Washington DC) . In fact the Owls only play 11 of their 29 games at FAU Arena this season.
That’s why the exhibition game was vital for the Owls.
All 12 players got playing time on an opponent other than themselves, and they move forward now with the momentum of a home victory — even if it was just an exhibition.
