CHARLESTON, SC – North Carolina A&T head men's basketball coach Monté Ross watched his team practice all week. He witnessed the team's shootaround before its game against the College of Charleston Thursday night at TD Arena. From those instances, he knew the Aggies were prepared to put up a fight against the Cougars.
He was right.
A&T guard Jahnathan Lamothe saw his 3-point attempt rim out at the buzzer as Charleston held on to defeat the Aggies 66-63 in a game played live on the CBS Sports Network. It marked another strong effort from a team that only played six players on Thursday. In some cases, against the Cougars, Aggie nation had to hold its collective breath as the team fought through injury scares and foul trouble.
But A&T persevered through that and a double-digit second-half deficit. A&T sophomore forward Nikolaos Chitikoudis had another solid overall game with 11 points, nine rebounds and six assists, but the Aggies still dropped to 4-20 overall and 0-11 in the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA). Meanwhile, Lamothe finished with 15 points, nine rebounds and three steals.
Charleston improved to 18-6 overall and 8-3 in league play behind the force of 6-10 senior forward Ante Brzovic who was very hard to stop in the second half. He scored 18 of his game-high 24 in the second half, including a baseline jumper over A&T freshman center Efstratios Kalliontzis that gave the Cougars a 50-40 lead with 12:47 remaining in the game.
Five minutes later, two Brzovic free throws helped the Cougars maintain their double-figure lead at 58-48. However, this time, the Aggies had a big-time response. A&T junior guard Camian Shell, who finished with 12 points on 4-for-6 shooting, hit an open three, cutting Charleston's lead to seven.
Brzovic scored again on a turnaround jumper in the paint before Shell found sophomore guard Jalal McKie in the corner for a three to before Lamothe rebounded his shot from a missed jumper to score, cutting Charleston's lead to four, 60-56 with five minutes remaining.
The Aggies got the lead down to three, 62-59, on a Shell free throw before two Brzovic free throws pushed the Cougars lead to five with 2:12 remaining. But Chitikoudis hit one of two free throws and the 5-10 Shell went hard to the basket, challenging the Charleston bigs to score on a layup.
Lazar Djokovic fouled Shell on the play, resulting in his fifth foul. Shell connected on the free throw to cut Charleston's lead to 64-63 with 21.4 seconds to play.
A&T had a few chances at steals using their pressure before finally fouling CJ Fulton. Fulton, an 88 percent free throw shooter, hit them both, leading to Lamothe's failed attempt at a game-tying 3-pointer.
"I thought our guys showed tremendous determination and grit," said Ross. "I saw it all week in practice, and I saw it today at shootaround. For this to be only the second time this group of guys have played together, I thought their effort was excellent tonight."
McKie came off the bench to score 14. The Aggies were ready to battle from the tip and with 6 ½ minutes remaining in the first half, Shell's 3-pointer gave the Aggies a 27-23 lead. A McKie putback gave the Aggies a 29-28 lead with 2:09 to play before a Fulton 3-pointer gave the Cougars a 31-29 halftime lead.
The Aggies will get another CBS Sports Network game on Monday when they travel to Buies Creek to face the Campbell Fighting Camels at 8 p.m.
