MOBILE, AL—Visiting NJIT doubled South Alabama's score in the second half, 48-24, and the Highlanders overcame a seven-point halftime deficit to win going away, 72-55, in men's basketball Sunday afternoon, with NJIT sophomores Damon Lynn and Tim Coleman each notching 20 points.
 
NJIT, which 6-1 in the 2015 calendar year, has won seven of its last eight games, raising its season record to 12-10.
 
South Alabama, the first-ever men's basketball foe for the Highlanders from the Sun Belt Conference, drops to 6-14 following the defeat.
 
In addition to Lynn and Coleman, who both scored exactly 11 points in the first half and nine in the second, NJIT got 10 points apiece for the game from Daquan Holiday and Winfield Willis. Rob Ukawuba fell short of giving the Highlanders a fifth double-figure scorer, adding 8 points, all of which came in the big second half, after he was held scoreless in the first
 
Holiday, NJIT's senior co-captain, finished with a team-leading 10 rebounds. For Holiday, the 10 rebounds were a season high and his 10-point, 10-rebound game marked his first double-double of the season and second of his career after a double-double against NCAA Division III Lyndon State in November 2012, when Holiday was a sophomore.
 
In addition to Holiday's 10 boards, the Highlanders got 7 rebounds from Ukawuba and 6 from Willis. They were outrebounded in the game, 46-38, but drilling a bit deeper, the Highlanders had 22-14 second half on the boards after being doubled, 32-16, in the opening half.
 
The Highlanders, although outrebounded in the game, finished with a 20-16 advantage in the rebounded-related second-chance points category. Indeed, despite dominating on the boards in the first half, South Alabama only held a 7-4 lead in second-chance points at the intermission.
 
South Alabama ended with three double-figure scorers, getting 12 points apiece from senior Dionte Ferguson and freshman Taishaun Johnson, while sophomore Ken Williams came off the USA bench for 10 points.
 
Ferguson had a double-double, pairing his 12 points with a game-high 12 rebounds and Jaguar freshman Abdul Lewis, a graduate of East Side High School in Newark, barely missed a double-double of his own, with 10 rebounds and 9 points against his hometown's team.
 
Statistically, NJIT's defensive work against South Alabama was the best effort of the season for the Highlanders, as the Jaguars' shooting percentage on all field goal attempts (29.7 pct; 19-64) and on 3-pointers (20.8 percent; 5-24) were the lowest of 2014-15 by an NJIT opponent.
 
The 29.7 percent clip on all shots from the field was the lowest by a Highlander opponent since UMass Lowell shot 26 percent (13-50) on December 12, 2013 and the 20.8 percent on threes was the lowest for an opponent since North Carolina Central's 16.7 percent (3-18) on January 16 last year.
 
The strong defense was especially valuable to the Highlanders in the first half, when they had their own trouble making shots.
 
In the first half, NJIT's field goal percentage was just 28.1 percent overall (9-for-32) and 23.5 percent on 3-point tries (4-for-17). With just two made free throws on three tries, the Highlanders scored 24 first-half points and trailed at the break, 31-24.
 
In the second half, when they poured in 48 points, again with minimal scoring at the foul line (3-for-5), the Highlanders more than doubled both of their field goal percentages. Overall, they shot 59.4 percent (19-32) in the second half and on threes, they shot 7-for-13 (53.8 percent).
 
Along with the strong defensive numbers, NJIT was steady with the ball throughout, committing a team season-low 9 turnovers, wiping out the previous season-best of 10, which came in the preceding game at Maine on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
 
Lynn, the Highlander sophomore, handled the ball for his team the most on Sunday, as he played all but the last six seconds. In nearly 40 minutes of action, he turned the ball over just once, while registering a game-best 6 assists and scoring 20 points to share game honors with his classmate Coleman.
 
Lynn's six 3-pointers on Sunday matched his season high, a feat he also accomplished in three consecutive games at Duquesne, UMass Lowell, and Michigan back in late November and early December. The six threes on Sunday were three shy of the school-record nine Lynn made in a game at North Carolina A&T last January.
 
Coleman, who shot 7-for-10 from the floor overall at South Alabama, including 4-for-6 on threes, helped carry the Highlanders offense early, netting NJIT's first seven points and nine of the first 16 points for the visitors.
 
The 20 points Coleman scored vs. South Alabama were the second-highest total of his career, topped only by the 22 he scored vs. Yale in a big win on January 9.
 
That career game vs. Yale was the sixth in a stretch of eight consecutive games in which Coleman scored at least 12. The streak was halted when he managed eight points at Maine last Monday, but Sunday's 20 at South Alabama means the sophomore has scored 12 or more in nine of the last 10 games. He is averaging 14.6 points and shooting 60 percent (54-of-90) in that span.
 
Coleman's four 3-pointers (4-for-6) at South Alabama were a new career high for the sophomore, who is 15-for-31 (48 percent) from downtown in the last 10 games.
 
The Highlanders opened the game at 4-0 on Coleman buckets that capped each of the first two NJIT possessions.
 
However, South Alabama responded with 11 unanswered points, the last six from Ferguson, the 6-foot-6 senior, and the Jaguars would lead for the rest of the opening half and past the midpoint of the second half.
 
NJIT's Coleman made a 3-pointer at 13:10 mark, breaking the 11-0 run. But South Alabama stayed ahead and took what would be its biggest lead of the game, 25-14, on a Ken Williams layup with 5:36 left in the opening half.
 
The USA lead was still at 11, 27-16, after a pair of Barrington Stevens foul shots with 1:35 left in the half, but NJIT closed the half with an 8-4 spurt, as Lynn sandwiched a pair of threes around a Holiday layup in the final 80 seconds ahead of halftime.
 
Just as they would in the final box score, Coleman and Lynn shared game scoring honors at the break with 9 points apiece, while Johnson's 7 points paced the Jaguars.
 
South Alabama led for 15:19 of the 20-minute first half and the Jaguars stayed ahead well into the second half.
 
NJIT missed a shot on the first possession of the second half and Johnson scored on the first South Alabama shot, staking the home team to a 33-24 lead 19 seconds into the second half.
 
But then things began tilting NJIT's way, as Coleman hit a 3-pointer to spark an 8-0 Highlander run in an 80-second spurt that narrowed the Jaguar lead to a single point.
 
Threatened, but not yet headed, South Alabama stayed in the lead, twice going up again by five points, the second time at 40-35 on a 3-pointer for Williams with 15:46 left.
 
The Highlanders made another surge, pulling to within a point of the lead at 43-42 on Lynn's three with 13:22 remaining, but the Jaguars kept finding the answer to keep the lead and they were on top 50-46 after an Abdul Lewis jump shot with 9:37 remaining.
 
However, the surges continued and NJIT finally broke the home team down the stretch, outscoring the Jaguars 26-8 over the last 9:19, beginning with a Holiday tip-in that sparked a 9-0 run for the Highlanders.
 
Included in the 9-0 was what proved to be the go-ahead basket, a Lynn 3-pointer that made it 51-50, NJIT, at the 8:54 mark.
 
South Alabama's Johnson hit a 3-pointer to break the 9-0 NJIT push, but the Johnson trey at the 6:57 mark would be his team's last bucket of the game and the Highlanders rattled off another 12-0 clip, capped by an Ukawuba layup that gave his team a 67-53 bulge with 1:48 left.
 
South Alabama got a pair of free throws from Lewis to break that 12-0 Highlander surge, but NJIT's Willis hit a 3-pointer and then a layup, both assisted by Lynn for the final 72-55 score that represented the biggest lead of the game for either team. The five late points pushed Willis to 10 for the game and the Highlanders are 10-3 when he generates double-digit points.
 
With Sunday's victory at South Alabama, NJIT is 6-9 this season in away games, matching the program-best six Division I road wins in a season set in 2013-14 when the Highlanders were 6-10 away from home.
 
They will play all six of their February games at home in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center, where their record so far is 6-1 so far. The February home stand begins on the 2nd at 7 pm, when the Highlanders entertain first-time opponent Hampton of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
 
The only remaining away game is at the end of the regular season, when the Highlanders will travel to Washington, DC, to challenge another first-time foe, Howard, also from the MEAC, on March 4