Coppin men survive Lincoln's upset bid

by Keith Henry

The Coppin State Eagles know how to make things interesting at the PEC. Division II Lincoln (PA) threw quite a scare into the Eagles. However, Lincoln missed out on key opportunities and the CSU defense woke up just in time to stave off the Lions 70-57.

It looked like CSU (2-2) was going to blow the Lions out of the PEC early. CSU guard Michael Harper got off to a hot start from the outside, scoring 10 of his team leading 19 points helping the Eagles go up 21-4 with 14:36 left in the first half.

However, the Lions launched a big comeback, outscoring CSU 32-12 the rest of the first half led by Baltimore native Denzel Mooney. Mooney scored 20 of his game high 31 points in the first half, leading them to a 36-33 halftime advantage. "I've been looking for it. He struggled in the first three games and he had some great looks and opportunities to put the ball in the basket. He just struggled. I guess coming home tonight actually added a little gas in his tank and (Denzel) was able to get off to a pretty good start."

Coppin head coach Fang Mitchell stated about the first half, "It was my fault with (the) substitution.The young people came in and they weren't ready to play. They allowed them to get back in the game. It went from making stops to 'Can I get mine now?' It's a maturity factor we got to work on."

Lincoln head coach John Hill said, "The kids showed some poise. We played in a couple games this year when we were down early. It was just a matter of settling down and regrouping because there was a lot of game left. We were getting too excited. One thing about it was it's not over until there are triple zeros left. So, we've been here before. It was good to see the kids show maturity and a little more poise because we've been there. It's now showing that we've actually making growth in that area. So, I knew that we would get back. I didn't know how soon, but I think we could get back in there."

Mooney said, "I don't really know what woke us up. But we started playing hard though. As a unit, we have to start playing hard. We didn't let it get to us that we was down. We just came back."

Lincoln led by as much as four in the second half on a Mooney dunk over Harper with 16 minutes left gave the Lions a 42-38 advantage. Coppin State started to make some noise shortly after that. CSU point guard Tony Gallo, who started for an injured Vince Goldsberry, really established himself by driving to the basket, forcing the Lions defense to converge on him. Gallo converted two free throws with 10:23 left to give the Eagles the lead for good at 48-46. Gallo had 18 points on the night.

Lincoln (0-4) had their opportunities to extend the lead. But they didn't convert on short range shots, leading to their downfall. Coppin started picking the Lions' pockets, which led to some easy baskets. But Fang pointed out, "Yeah, but the fact that it was an ugly basketball game. We had 19 turnovers ourselves. So no matter how many times we turned them over, it's still the fact that we kept turning it back over to them. So it's not the way that it should be. We're just going to have to get better."

Coppin learned something from this experience. Harper stated, "We need to learn not to take nobody for granted. that's what we actually did at one point, because we thought this was a Division II school, we was going to get them out of here and it really don't count towards any of our games (It does count for the record). So we're going across town against a real team. I played against them many times and I know they're tough. I know Coach Bozeman got them geeked and ready to go. We need to come in there tough and don't let nobody get to us."