Florida Tech Panthers Fall 88-79 In Overtime At Home To St. Leo, Drop To 10-7 On Season
By Mitch Praxl, Assistant Athletic Communications Director // January 19, 2017
Tempers boil over as FIT is outscored 14-3 in OT
BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – With Florida Tech trailing by just three points with 36 seconds left to play, Florida Tech committed back-to-back technical fouls, the first on Robert Booth and the second on the bench, pushing the deficit out to three possessions and putting the game out of reach as the Panthers fell 88-79 in overtime Wednesday night at the Clemente Center.
Each of the Panthers’ “Big Three” put up big numbers on the night. Sam Daniel finished the game with 28 points to lead all scorers, adding five rebounds.
Jordan Majors and Patrick Anderson each pitched in 19 points, with the former collecting four boards and dishing out two assists and the latter registering four dimes and three rebounds.
The bulk of the Lions’ offensive production was a little more spread out, with five SLU players reaching double figures.
Justin Satchell led the way with 26 points, including six triples, while Marcus Dewberry wasn’t far behind with 24.
Antoine Tobias matched his 13 points with the same number of rebounds, while Necdet Gurkan and Tyreece Brice followed with 12 and 11, respectively.
In addition to the myriad of late foul shots, the Lions’ hot shooting in the second half was the difference.
SLU scorched the nets in the second stanza, hitting 61.5 percent of its field goals, including 11-of-16 threes, a 68.8 percentage.
After a few early lead changes, Florida Tech led for the bulk of the first half. The score was fairly tight for most of the first 20 minutes but FIT closed on a 12-5 run to hit the break with momentum and a 41-29 advantage.
That lead grew to as much as 17 with 18:36 to go but from there the Lions started to whittle away at the deficit. With just over six minutes to go in regulation, the Panther lead had been cut to just two at 66-64.
With 1:34 to go Dewberry sank a three with Daniel in his face to push the Lions out to a 73-72 lead.
However, Anderson hit a pair of free throws and put home a layup in successive order to give FIT a three-point advantage with just 39 seconds to go.
On the next possession, Dewberry drove and drew the FIT defense in, allowing for Brice to find a wide open Satchell, who drilled the long ball to knot the score.
Anderson had one chance in the final seconds but his three went narrowly astray and Booth’s put-back attempt was swatted away by Tobias.
In the overtime period, Anderson hit 1-of-2 at the charity stripe to give FIT the lead but Saint Leo answered with a 6-0 run to go up by five.
With 1:01 remaining, Sam Daniel seemed to hit a tying three but the bucket was waived off on a moving screen by Booth prior to the ball leaving the forwards hand, a call that easily could have gone either way.
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Shortly thereafter, the technical were handed out and a scuffle between Daniel and Gurkan resulted in matching flagrants and another pair of free throws for SLU.
Despite having made just 61.5 percent of their free throws until that point, the Lions drained eight consecutive to put the Panthers away.
FIT now heads out for a three-game stretch on the road, beginning with a trip to Winter Park, Florida on Saturday to matchup with the Tars of Rollins at 4 p.m. ET. Links to live coverage will be available at FloridaTechSports.com.
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