The Erie BayHawks actually led this game 25-24 at the end of the first quarter, thanks in part to a sloppy quarter from the Energy, who committed 7 first-quarter turnovers. Unfortunately, the BayHawks responded with 8 turnovers of their own in the second quarter, including this godawful sequence to start the quarter:
Possession 1: Missed shot by Aminu, offensive rebound, Gansey's shot gets blocked (Iowa scores 1 point on the other end)
Possession 2: Turnover on a bad pass by Tolbert leads into a fast break resulting in two made free throws for Iowa
Possession 3: Missed layup by Tolbert (Iowa gets a layup going the other way)
Possession 4: Offensive foul on Tolbert (Iowa scores a bucket on the other end)
Possession 5: Turnover on a bad pass by Bryant leads into yet another fast break layup for Iowa.
In less than two-and-a-half minutes, Erie squandered away their 1-point lead and were faced with an 8-point deficit. After cutting it to six on a couple of occasions after a timeout, Erie watched Iowa's lead grow to 59-46 at halftime and as high as 24 in the second half before making a late mini-surge to make it respectable.
If you only look at the box score, you might think that two of the most important BayHawks, Mike Gansey and Alade Aminu had solid performances. Don't let the numbers fool you. Gansey scored 5 of his 15 in the final minutes after the game was in hand for the Energy, And Aminu, who inexplicably did not get the start in the game after he was named as a D-League All-Star, was outplayed by Earl Barron and the Energy front line. He never looked fully comfortable out there offensively.
Jackie Manuel was the lone bright spot for the BayHawks, and even that comes with the asterisk that he shot 4-10 from the free throw line. Erie was 9-20 from the charity stripe as a team. Ouch. Forty-five percent free throw shooting is not part of the recipe for knocking off the top team in the conference.
Ivan Harris shot 0-1 from 3-point range, but he was 4-6 on Ivans. For new readers, that's what I'm now calling the deep-two-point-jumper-from-anywhere-between-the-college-and-NBA-33-point-line shot that Harris is enamored with taking. His counterpart, Jeff Trepanier made a point to keep his toes behind the line, draining 6-9 from 3-point range and leading the Energy with 25 points. It's amazing how he's reinvented himself as a shooter. I miss the high-flying antics from his USC days, but he was deadly from deep in this one.
The BayHawks, who fell to 12-17 with the loss, now travel to Iowa for three more games against the Energy starting Friday night. Erie is 0-5 against Iowa this season. The Energy is now 23-6 on the year, leading the East Conference by four games.
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