RICHMOND, Va. - Coming off a benchmark 76-69 road win at Boston College, the IUPUI basketball team will look to keep the good times rolling on Friday night (Nov. 16) when the Jaguars face Richmond (1-1) at 7:00 p.m. inside Robins Center on ESPN+. The game is the second of four games for the Jaguars as part of this year's Fort Myers Tip-Off.
IUPUI (2-1) got 29 points from
Camron Justice and 18 points and 10 boards from
Evan Hall to stun Boston College on Wednesday night on the road. The win was IUPUI's first over a Power 5 foe since beating Seton Hall in 2008 and the first win over an ACC opponent since winning at Georgia Tech in 2001. Justice got off to a slow start, but hit big shots down the stretch, including a trey from the right wing late in the contest. Junior
Nick Rogers may have contributed the biggest bucket of the night, burying a 30-footer as the shot clock was expiring in the final minute to make it a six-point game.
The victory caught fire on social media, earning mention from the NCAA March Madness Twitter account that boasts more than a million followers.
QUOTABLE: "I think we surprised everyone except for the young men in our locker room. We've got a good team and I was glad we were able to show that tonight. Even though Cam didn't shoot it great tonight, he made the big shots down the stretch and was our go-to guy when we needed him. I thought Evan and Elyjah were monsters inside, particularly on the offensive glass in terms of keeping possessions alive and getting us second shots.
D.J. McCall was absolutely outstanding defensively in the second half. To hold a guy like Bowman down like he did in the second half is pretty special," Gardner said after Wednesday's win at Boston College.
UP NEXT: IUPUI will continue the four-game Fort Myers Tip-Off next week when the Jaguars play a pair of games in Niagara on Nov. 23-24. The Jags will take on St. Francis Brooklyn on Friday, Nov. 23 and then will play either Grambling or host Niagara on Saturday, Nov. 24.
QUICK NOTES (click here to access the full notes for Friday's game):
BETTER THAN BEANTOWN
IUPUI got a benchmark victory in the opening game of the Fort Myers Tip-Off on Wednesday night, picking off Boston College, 76-69. Junior
Camron Justice scored a game-high 29 points, including a perfect 13-of-13 from the free throw line, and his high school teammate,
Evan Hall, finished his sixth career double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. IUPUI outrebounded Boston College 40-28 overall and 16-5 off the offensive glass, leading to 13 second chance points. Sophomore
Elyjah Goss just missed his second straight double-double with nine points and 10 boards.
It was IUPUI's first win over a Power 5 foe since defeating Seton Hall in 2008 and the first win over an ACC opponent since winning at Georgia Tech in 2001.
Here are some other tidbits from the win at Boston College.
-Justice's 13-for-13 night at the foul line tied for the fourth-most in school history without a miss. The school record is 18-for-18.
-Junior guard
Nick Rogers was a perfect 2-for-2 from three and 2-for-2 at the foul line off the bench, including a 30-footer as the shot clock was expiring in the final minute to make it a two possession game.
-IUPUI outscored Boston College 19-4 in fast break points, including seven straight during a 7-0 first half run.
-Justice had the Jaguars' highest +/- of the night at +16 while Rogers was +10 in just 15 minutes off the IUPUI bench.
-IUPUI hit 40 percent from the floor for the first time this season after being held under 40 in the season's first two games.
-IUPUI is now just 5-70 (.067) when being outshot from the floor under head coach Jason Gardner.
BLOW OUT THE CANDLES
Head coach Jason Gardner celebrated his 38th birthday in style, collecting his 50th career head coaching win at Boston College on Wednesday night.
Gardner is third on the program's all-time wins list at 50, but is a far cry from the top two in program history. Current Georgia State head coach Ron Hunter (275) and IUPUI Hall of Famer Bob Lovell (195) own the top two spots in program history.
OVER .500
It's a rare feat that the Jaguars sit above .500 under head coach Jason Gardner. IUPUI is at 2-1 for the first time since the 2012-13 season and hasn't started 3-1 since 2004-05. A Gardner-led IUPUI team has never been above .500 later than the fifth game of the season.
SHARING THE WEALTH
In just three games, only one IUPUI player has scored in double-figures more than once as Justice has a pair of 20-point games. Beyond that, five others (Goss, Hall, Hansen, Justice, Minnett and Weatherford) have hit for double-digits in at least one of the three games. IUPUI has had a 20-point scorer in each of the season's first three games with Minnett going for 20+ at Xavier and Justice scoring 20-or-more in the two games since.
SPIDER NOTES
Today's game is the second-ever meeting between IUPUI and Richmond. The two sides hooked up on Dec. 23, 2014 in Gardner's first season on the sidelines with the Spiders winning, 57-53. Ironically, now senior
D.J. McCall made his second career start in that contest, finishing with a rebound and an assist in 13 minutes of action. McCall, a fifth-year senior, is the lone active player to have played in that matchup.
True freshmen
Brandon Kenyon and Richmond's Matt Grace were teammates at RISE Prep last season. Kenyon comes in averaging 3.5 points in his first two collegiate games while Grace is averaging 1.5 points per game for the Spiders.
TRENDS
Some trends are beginning to shake out after the season's opening three games. Sophomore
Elyjah Goss has led the Jaguars in rebounding in all three games and comes in averaging 9.3 boards per game and 3.0 offensive boards per contest.
IUPUI is shooting just 38.2 percent from the floor in the season's first three games and just 31.2 percent from three-point range. The poor shooting has led to plenty of offensive rebound opportunities as IUPUI is grabbing 12.3 per contest.
700 DAYS
IUPUI junior guard
Camron Justice was 700 days removed from his last competitive basketball game when the Jags took the floor against Xavier. Justice played just more than a season at Vanderbilt before joining the IUPUI program prior to last fall and sitting the full season as a transfer. Prior to Xavier, Justice last played in a game on Dec. 6, 2016 when the Commodores defeated High Point.
Justice and
Evan Hall were high school teammates at Knott County Central (Ky.) High School, helping the Patriots to four straight state tournament appearances. Justice finished his high school career with 3,588 points and 393 treys before being named the 2015 Kentucky Mr. Basketball.
OTHER NEWBIES
While Justice is nearly two full years removed from his last Division I game, others in the Jaguars' rotation are in similar spots. Junior guard
Grant Weatherford has never appeared in a Division I game, despite graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 2015. Weatherford redshirted at Purdue in 2015-16, played a full season at Midland (Texas) College in 2016-17 and sat out all of last season.
A LOOK BACK
Last year's IUPUI team ranked among the nation's best in steals (6.8 spg) and turnovers forced (14.7 to/game). IUPUI ranked 53rd nationally in turnovers forced per game and were among the nation's best in steals percentage.
In addition, last year's squad was among the best in the country in hitting the offensive glass, grabbing 11.5 offensive caroms per game.
Evan Hall ranked 102nd individually in offensive rebounding, grabbing 2.6 offensive boards per contest as a junior.
HOT BENCH
A staple under head coach Jason Gardner has been his teams' bench scoring as the IUPUI leader likes to play 9-10 players and use his bench frequently. Gardner's teams have matched or outscored the opposition's bench in 94 of 128 games (73.4 percent), including the season's first three games. All total, the IUPUI bench is averaging better than 25 points per game, accounting for 36 percent of the team's scoring.
