Men's Basketball | 12/6/2016 9:41:00 AM
By Duane Cochran for FightingFalcons.com
Fairmont State's No. 11 ranked men's basketball team enjoyed an extremely productive five-day span recently recording wins over No. 4 Wheeling Jesuit and No. 1 West Liberty.
Led by senior forward Matt Bingaya, the Mountain East Conference Player of the Week, the 7-0 Falcons knocked off the Cardinals Wednesday, Nov. 30 in Wheeling, 95-92, in overtime and then Sunday, Dec. 4 handed top-ranked West Liberty its first loss of the season 86-81 in front of a national television audience at FSU's Joe Retton Arena.
Bingaya scored 28 points and grabbed eight rebounds in the win over Wheeling and backed it up with a 24-point, eight-rebound performance against the Hilltoppers.
"This was a huge week for us and we just took it one step at a time," Bingaya said. "We never gave up on one single play in either game and that was crucial because both games came right down to the wire. We won in overtime against Wheeling and the West Liberty game wasn't decided until the final seconds of regulation.
"Both of those teams are great teams. (Dan) Monteroso, for West Liberty, is the real deal. He went off Sunday for 32, but at the end Sham (Shammgod Wells) had three crucial steals for us, a big offensive rebound and made clutch free throws and Trev (Trevor Andrews-Evans) has three offensive rebounds and three put-backs in the final three minutes. Those efforts were huge. You don't design that. There's no game plan for that. That's just pure grit and determination and Sunday and up at Wheeling that's what won it for us. It was crazy this week, but it was a lot of fun. Now we can relax for a day or so before we get back to business."
The Falcons will return to the court Thursday evening at home at 7 p.m. in a nonconference game against Davis & Elkins College.
Since transferring to Fairmont last year from Division I Southern Mississippi Bingaya has scored 661 points and grabbed 244 rebounds in 36 games for Fairmont State. For his college career he currently has 1,257 points and 541 rebounds.
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The updated national rankings for men's basketball will be released today. As noted Fairmont State was ranked 11th in last week's NABC Coaches Top 25 and 12th in the D2SIDA Media Poll. The new media poll will be released today at noon, while the updated Coaches Poll will come out at 3 p.m.
Other than West Liberty and Wheeling Jesuit only two teams in front of the Falcons in the Coaches Poll suffered losses this past week. No. 8 Kutztown went 1-1, losing 77-76 to No. 12 Indiana (Pa.) University, which lost itself to unbeaten and unranked Shippensburg, 87-80. No. 9 Barry (Fla.) University also went 1-1, losing in overtime 99-93 to Saint Leo.
Fairmont State will square off with IUP in its final game of the first semester in Indiana, Pa on Monday, Dec. 19 at 7:30 p.m.
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Senior center Trevor Andrews-Evans is off to the best start in his career and has played a key role in the Falcons' 7-0 start to the 2016-17 season.
Andrews-Evans is averaging 6.6 points and 5.7 rebounds for FSU. He had five points and five rebounds in the win over Wheeling and eight points and a game-high 12 rebounds in the victory over West Liberty. Six of his eight points in that win came in the game's final 3:23 and all six came off of offensive rebounds and put-back baskets.
"His game has come a long way since he first started with us," FSU coach Jerrod Calhoun said. "He's just so much more comfortable around the basket and he's doing a lot of good things for us."
FSU senior point guard Shammgod Wells agrees.
"I'm so happy for Trev because he does so many of the little things that people don't see for our team," Wells said. "He's the ultimate teammate. I mean if you'd call Trev at two in the morning because your car broke down he'd be right there to get you. That's the type of person he is.
"He's come such a long way as a player. His freshman year he was really just a good defensive player for us. Now he's finishing everything around the basket and still playing solid defense for us and blocking shots. That's just a credit to him and how hard he's worked to become a complete player. He's in the gym all of the time working on his game."
Andrews-Evans has 333 career points, 423 career rebounds and has blocked 179 career shots. He need just 25 more blocked shots to pass Terrence Coleman for second place in FSU history in that category.
Speaking of the record book, Wells is currently fourth in school history in both career assists (402) and career steals (171). He needs 25 more steals to overtake Steve Custis (195) for the career lead in that category and 124 more assists to replace Brian Tristani as FSU's all-time leader in assists.
Senior Thomas Wimbush is second on the team in scoring (16.4) and first in rebounding (8.7) this season. Wimbush has 1,245 career points and 613 career rebounds. He currently ranks 37th in FSU history in career scoring.
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Inconsistent play has led to a 4-3 start for Fairmont State's Lady Falcons, who were tabbed as the preseason favorites in the Mountain East Conference this season.
FSU started the year 2-0 with back-to-back impressive wins over Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference foes Clarion and Lock Haven. Since then, however, Fairmont has gone just 2-3, including a 2-2 mark in MEC play which currently has the team in seventh place in the 12-team conference. FSU's league losses to first place Wheeling Jesuit and West Virginia Wesleyan which is currently in a five-way tie for second place came by a combined total of just seven points.
"There's no question that all of us are a bit frustrated that we started the season with three losses here in the early going," senior guard/forward Makenzie White said. "We know that we can play better than we have and we need to start doing that. We've got three nonconference games now left to finish out the first semester and we want to finish it out strong going into the Christmas break."
FSU will host Davis & Elkins College Saturday at 2 p.m. and then have another week off before hosting Ohio Valley in a 2 p.m. contest Saturday, Dec. 17 at the Joe Retton Arena. The team will close out the first semester of action Monday, Dec. 19 with a road game at Edinboro (Pa.) University.
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Four of Fairmont State's five senior starters all have excellent opportunities to finish their careers as 1,000-point scorers at the school. Makenzie White currently has 830 career points at FSU and needs just 170 more to reach 1,000. Close behind her is forward Amanda Ruffner, who has 822 points and needs just 178 more to reach 1,000. Guard Emily Puskarich (740 career points) needs 260 more points and guard/forward Deidra Combs (716 career points) needs 284.
Puskarich currently ranks fifth in FSU history in career made 3-point field goals with 184, while Combs ranks eighth in school history in career blocked shots with 94.
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