Dec. 6, 2007

Box Score

NEWARK, NJ - Senior guard Jarell Brown scored a game-high 23 points, leading visiting Army to a 54-44 men's basketball win over NJIT Thursday night in the Highlanders' first-ever game in the downtown Prudential Center, home of the New Jersey Devils.

Brown, who came in averaging 21.3 points per game and has reached 30 points twice this year, including 34 in his last game against VMI, scored 10 points in the first half and 13 in the second against NJIT.

Josh Miller, a 6-foot sophomore guard, pulled down eight rebounds to lead the Black Knights in that department. Miller and Corbin Bates each made three steals, as Army took the ball away from the Highlanders 13 times.

Freshman guard Jheryl Wilson netted a career-best 16 points to pace NJIT's scorers, while junior forward Nesho Milosevic grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds for the Highlanders.

The Black Knights scored the game's first 14 points, with five different men entering the scoring column. Army blanked the Highlanders for the first 5:26 on the defensive end, before Wilson broke the ice for NJIT.

After that, Army's lead slipped into single digits just twice, the latest on NJIT freshman Brendon Lyn's free throw that made it 29-20 for Army with 18:14 left. But Army's Brown scored on a layup 14 seconds later and the Black Knights led by at least 10 the rest of the way.

Army scored 20 points off turnovers to 9 for NJIT for the game, including 15-3 in the first half, when the Black Knights took advantage of 16 NJIT first-half miscues to lead at the break, 29-19.

The importance of that statistic was underlined in the second half, when the points off turnovers favored the Highlanders, 6-5, and the overall scoring was even at 25-25.

NJIT's Wilson, whose previous career high was 14 points vs. Vermont on November 20, collected 10 first-half points against Army's aggressive man-to-man defense.

Wilson's NJIT classmate, Justin Garris, opened some eyes in the second half, scoring all seven of his points after the intermission, including a three-point basket and a breakaway dunk off of a steal.

The freshman also made a spectacular block, running full speed and rising above the rim to reject a breakaway layup attempt by Army's Cleveland Richard at the 7:57 mark. Garris' fast-break dunk on the other end came 22 seconds later and his three-point basket came 54 seconds after that pulling the Highlanders to within 11, at 46-35, with 6:41 left.

Thursday's game was the first of four games that NJIT will host in the downtown Newark Prudential Center this season. The next Highlander game in the sparkling new arena is on Thursday, December 13 at 7 pm, against Rutgers.

NJIT will have two more road games before the date with Rutgers. Next up for the Highlanders is a 1 pm game at Fordham on Saturday.