RALEIGH, NC – Fans in the city of Raleigh can breathe a little bit easier on Wednesday evening as the Shaw University Bears were able to narrowly sneak by the Blue Bears of Livingstone College by the score of 72-65 and keep the possibility of once again bringing home another CIAA Men’s Basketball Championship to the capital city.
The game was close throughout as the Blue Bears (3-23 overall), the sixth seed in the Western Division played well and kept pace with the third-seeded Bears (12-15 overall), even jumping out to a six point halftime lead with the score 32-26.
The second half however, belonged to the Bears as Shaw used a pair of small scoring runs to pull ahead by as many as nine points midway through the second half of play.
Livingstone used a valiant effort in their bid to earn their fourth win of the season, and would even cut the Shaw lead to three points at 68-65 with only 25.8 seconds remaining.
The Blue Bear comeback would come to end shortly thereafter as Shaw buried their free throws down the stretch, eventually earning the seven-point victory.
When asked what he thought, Shaw University Head Coach Michael Bernard said, “We had five guys in double figures, and that is the way that we like to play, and basically, it is a win. I think that we did a much better job defensively in the second half and overall, and now, we are on to the second round,”
The Bears, who improve to 12-15 with the win move on to face the Fayetteville State University Broncos, the #1 seed in the Western Division on Thursday afternoon.
“We basically went with a smaller unit in the second half. They out-rebounded us, out-hustled us in the first half and we were able to match their intensity and even got out on the transition, and got some easy hoops in the second half, and that proved to be the difference.”
The two teams, who will tip off tomorrow at 3:00 pm in the second game of
CIAA Men’s Tournament second-round action met only once in the regular
season on January 22nd, 2004 in Fayetteville, NC with Shaw earning the 78-76
victory over the Broncos.