Florida Tech Gets Throttled By Tampa In Men’s Hoops, 85-66
By Florida Tech Athletic Communications // January 11, 2015
Chris Carter finished with 26
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Tampa built on a 12-point halftime lead to beat Florida Tech 85-66 Saturday evening at the Clemente Center. The Spartans improve to 8-5 overall and 2-2 in the Sunshine State Conference, while the Panthers drop to 10-4, 0-3 SSC.
“Tonight was an old fashioned spanking,” head coach Billy Mims said.
“Tampa played physical, in your face basketball. They were pushing and shoving the whole game. Some of it I thought might have been fouls, some of it probably wasn’t, some of it was probably just good physical basketball.”
“Either way, we did a poor job of being able to play against a physical style of play. I don’t think we did a very good job of standing up to Tampa’s strength, size and brute physical play. It took us out of what we wanted to do,” said head coach Billy Mims.
Austin Rettig led the Spartans with a game-high 31 points and 10 rebounds.
Three of his 13 first-half points came from the three-point line, where Tampa totaled 18 of its 48 points in the first 20 minutes. At several points of the opening period, Tampa just did not miss.
It finished the first half 16-of-32 from the field and 6-of-13 from long distance.
Chris Carter and Akeem Johnson provided nearly all of the offensive firepower in the first half. Carter had 15 and Johnson supplied 12 as they trailed 48-36 at the break.
The Panthers worked their deficit down to six less than four minutes into the second half following a basket by Carter. Just as it looked like FIT was going to inch further closer, Tampa went on a 6-0 run.
FIT cut its deficit to single digits two more times before the six-minute mark, but it was unable to overcome the Spartans in the end.
Chris Carter finished with 26 points, one off his season-high. He only missed one three-pointer as he went 4-of-5 from long distance, 10-of-13 from the field and 2-of-3 from the line. Johnson closed out the game with 17 to tie his previous season-high earned on Dec. 6 against Eckerd.
Mims and Co. have a tough week ahead as the Panthers are set to play two top 10 teams in No. 7 Florida Southern and No. 8 Barry on the road.
The week begins on Wednesday with a 7:30 p.m. tip-off at Barry.
They will then travel to Lakeland for a 7:30 p.m. contest against Florida Southern on Saturday, Jan. 17.
Live video, audio and stats will be available for both games at FloridaTechSports.com
