Game Highlights (Video)

Engles, Lynn Postgame Comments (ESPN3)


NEWARK, NJ—In a season of firsts, NJIT men's basketball scored its first home win as a first-year member of the Atlantic Sun Conference with a wire-to-wire 83-63 victory over visiting Jacksonville Thursday night in the Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
Thursday's victory over Jacksonville comes on the heels of NJIT's first A-Sun away win, 71-59, last Saturday at Stetson. The Highlanders, now 2-2 in the A-Sun and 11-9 overall, led at Stetson from start-to-finish, as well.
 
Jacksonville, which had won two in a row and three of the last four, falls to 2-2 in the A-Sun and 10-11 overall after dropping Thursday's first all-time meeting between the programs.
 
NJIT's Damon Lynn led all scorers with 20 points, collecting 17 of them in the second half on the strength of 6-for-7 shooting from the floor that included 4-for-5 on 3-point tries. Lynn also made his only free throw of the half, completing a traditional 3-point play, and dished out 7 assists in the half.
 
Lynn led a parade of five double-figure scorers from the Highlanders, who got 14 apiece from Ky Howard and Rob Ukawuba, while Tim Coleman and Terrence Smith each chipped in 10 points.
 
Coleman, the versatile junior forward, pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds—11 on the defensive end—to pace NJIT, which held a 43-32 advantage in total rebounds over the visiting Dolphins. In addition, Coleman dished off 4 assists and made 2 steals.
 
Howard, the senior point guard for the Highlanders, made 5 of 6 shots, including both of his 3-point tries and also connected on his two free throws. He added 4 assists.
 
Ukawuba, who came off the NJIT bench for a team-leading 9 first-half points, ended with 14 points by game's end. 
 
Smith, a junior low post player, grabbed 6 rebounds and made 5 of his 7 shots. The nation's third-leading field goal percentage shooter in 2013-14 at .629, Smith missed all of last season due to injury and got off to a sporadic start in his return this season. However, in the six games played in 2016, Smith is shooting 77 from the field (27-for-35).
 
In addition to winning by 20 points and outrebounding the visitors, NJIT put up an impressive assists-to-turnovers ratio of 24-to-11, coupled with assists on three-quarters of its baskets (24 assists on 32 field goals).
 
Jacksonville's top scorer Thursday night was junior swing man Marcel White with 19 points, 18 of which came on his six 3-point field goals. Junior JR Holder added 12 points for JU.
 
Senior Kori Babineaux, who came in as the second-leading scorer in the Atlantic Sun, averaging 18.6 points, finished Thursday's game with 10 points. Babineaux entered the game having scored at least 15 points in each of his last 14 games.
 
Babineaux and classmate Josh Adeyeye were the top rebounders for the Dolphins with 7 apiece and Babineaux paced the visitors with 4 assists.
 
In addition to never trailing at any time in its last two games, including Thursday, NJIT has avoided some of the issues that troubled it between December 28 and January 14, when the Highlanders went 2-4, including losses in three consecutive games for the first time since November 2014. Those three straight losses came in the final pre-conference game at Yale and continued through the first two A-Sun games, both razor-thin defeats by a combined margin of 6 points.
 
The Highlanders had slow starts in their late December to mid-January stretch and trailed at halftime in all six games. They also fared poorly under the boards in that stretch, including being outrebounded by 11 vs. USC Upstate and by 10 at FGCU in the first two A-Sun losses.
 
But they turned that around at Stetson, building a 20-point lead by halftime and winning the rebound battle for the game. Against Jacksonville, the Highlanders led 14-5 before six minutes had expired.
 
Meanwhile, NJIT's +11 advantage in total rebounds matched its second-best bulge of the season, done almost six weeks ago vs. Kent State on December 7.
 
NJIT, which never trailed against Jacksonville, eventually took a 25-12 lead on Smith's layup with 6:03 left in the opening half. But the visitors kept coming at the Highlanders and outscored the home team 14-7 down the stretch to close to 32-26 by halftime.
 
White, Jacksonville's lanky junior hit a pair of 3-pointers and Antwon Clayton sunk three foul shots in the last 1:21 to fuel the Dolphins pre-halftime rally.
 
The visitors got even closer to begin the second half, as they answered Smith's bucket on NJIT's first possession with back-to-back threes by White in a span of 34 seconds to close the gap to 34-32.
 
After the teams traded two-point jump shots, NJIT exploded, turning a 36-34 advantage with 17:16 remaining into a 53-34 lead with 14:31 left.
 
The Highlanders, who shot 2-for-14 from downtown in the opening half, hit five triples in a row during the 17-0 run in a span of 2:45. Lynn triggered and capped the run with 3-pointers for NJIT, which also got a 3-pointer each from Osa Izevbuwa and Ukawuba to go with Howard's jump shot in the lane during the 17-0 spurt.
 
The rally put the Highlanders on top by 19 with 14:31 remaining and they were in charge for the remainder of the game, leading by at least 21 from Lynn's jump shot with 10:46 on the clock until Jacksonville briefly trimmed the deficit to 19 with 40 seconds left. The biggest lead was 29 points, at 79-50, after a pair of Ukawuba foul shots at the 3:23 mark.

Now that they have leveled their A-Sun record at 2-2, the Highlanders are scheduled to face a stern test on Saturday at 4 pm, when they host North Florida in the Fleisher Athletic Center. North Florida is the defending conference champion, was picked as the favorite to repeat in the A-Sun coaches' preseason poll, and stands at 5-0 so far in conference play (16-6 overall, with 6 straight wins).

Storm-related information for Saturday
As of late Thursday night, the men's game between the Highlanders and the UNF Ospreys is still set to be played at 4 pm on Saturday. With a major winter storm on its way for the weekend, the women's game between NJIT and North Florida was rescheduled to Friday at 7 pm, moved up from the original time and date of 1 pm on Saturday.
 
If any changes are made with regard to the NJIT-North Florida men's game, they will be updated as soon as they become official here on www.njithighlanders.com.
 
Changes, if they happen, will also be announced on the official social media outlets of NJIT athletics (Twitter, @njithighlanders; Instagram, NJIT Highlanders; Facebook, NJIT Highlanders Athletics).