JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—In just his second career start at Southeastern, sophomore
Isaiah Moody made a huge impact.
Moody was a perfect 9-for-9 from the field and scored a career-high 21 points in an 82-73 win at Edward Waters Sunday night.
He scored nine of the first 12 points of the night for the Fire, pulling down two rebounds and scoring two transition layups to get SEU up 7-2 less than two minutes into the game.
"Isaiah is tough to guard and goes to the rim every time," said coach
R-Jay Barsh. "He showed he's a big time player, we know what we're getting out of him every single night."
Despite the team shooting better than 70% in the first half (17-24), the Fire trailed 44-43 at halftime, mostly due to 11 turnovers.
In the second half, Southeastern (12-3) went back to what it does best—attacking the basket and getting to the free throw line, where it was a perfect 13-of-13 in the second 20 minutes.
After falling behind five with 16:10 left, the Fire compiled a 7-1 run, capped off by a three-point play by
Josiah Barsh with 14:35 to go to take a 52-51 lead.
Barsh finished with 16 points and five rebounds.
In his Fire debut,
Qua Harper scored 12 points, including five straight points to put the Fire up six (63-57) with 10:27 left.
"We talked about pace and tempo and being the more disciplined team down the stretch," said Barsh. "Early in the season we settled for quick three's against zone defenses, but today we penetrated gaps and took the right ones."
The Fire also buckled down defensively, holding the Tigers to just 33% (12-36) from the field in the second half. Even with 16 offensive rebounds, the Fire defense limited EWC to just nine second chance points from those 16 rebounds.
Linwood Ross added 10 off the bench.
Southeastern returns to Sun Conference play on Thursday at Thomas.
