JSU suffers first ASUN loss to North Florida - Jacksonville State University Athletics

Thursday, February 3

JACKSONVILLE

7:30 p.m.

Jax State

15-7,8-1ASUN

North Florida

6-17,2-7ASUN

Team	1	2	F
North Florida	35	53	88
Jacksonville St.	31	45	76

2/3/2022 10:31:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

JACKSONVILLE – The streak ended. Jacksonville State fell to North Florida, 88-76, on Thursday night for its first loss since December 18.

Multiple impressive marks faltered in Thursday's setback to the Ospreys (6-17, 2-7 ASUN), including JSU's perfect league record which now drops to 8-1 but still holds first-place in the standings. However, the most obvious standard that fell was the fact that the second-best three-point shooting team in the nation finished 3-of-19 from deep and failed to connect on one until the final eight minutes.

Senior Brandon Huffman finished one point away from matching his career-best with a team-high 19 points. The big man scored 12 of JSU's first 21 as JSU dominated scoring in the paint, 50-22. Unfortunately, UNF countered that and then some shooting 49 percent from deep (17-35) and held a 15-to-0 advantage in made threes late in the game for a 45-0 point separation.

Senior Darian Adams and junior Jalen Finch each scored 16, while Kayne Henry led on the glass with eight rebounds.

Winning their final seven conference games to close the 2002-03 campaign, and starting 8-0 in their return to the league this season, made for 6,935 days since the Gamecocks last lost a regular season ASUN contest on Feb. 8, 2003.

UNF jumped ahead from the start to lead wire-to-wire and join VCU as the only other opponent JSU failed to hold a lead against. The Ospreys led 26-15 midway through the first half, and then 35-25 in the closing minutes, before JSU finished on a 6-0 run to pull within four at the break.

After Huffman's first bucket cut the margin to two at 35-33, JSU was never in striking distance again. UNF's Carter Hendricksen led the visitors with 27 points, the most allowed to an individual opponent this season by the Gamecocks. His teammate Jose Placer matched the previous mark scoring 25.

JSU looks to rebound against Jacksonville on Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the next-to-last cross-division matchup of the regular season.