JACKSONVILLE — Jaron Pierre bounced back in a big way Thursday night.
The senior from New Orleans scored a career-high 36 points in a 77-63 win over Middle Tennessee at the Pete Mathews Coliseum to move to 8-2 in Conference USA play and now has a two-game lead in the league standings over the Blue Raiders, Kennesaw State and others pending the results of Thursday's games.
His 36 points matched the most in a game at home by a Jax State player since moving to NCAA Division I.
Last week, Pierre was held to 23 total points in two games.
"He's been battling a little bit and we gave him Sunday and Monday off, I thought it was probably wise to give him one more day," said coach
Ray Harper. "He's just played a lot of minutes and he looked fresh at the end of the game tonight."
By halftime, Pierre had already scored 25 points thanks to a 7-of-9 effort from 3-point land.
Three-point shooting was the key early on with the Gamecocks connecting on four of their first five attempts from bonus range.
Koree Cotton knocked down two triples and Pierre added one, all in a 95 second span to give the hosts a 17-9 lead at the media timeout at the 13:43 mark.
"We're not afraid to shoot them," said Harper. "We thought we could do a couple of things offensively to get some looks. And I thought early in the game we really shared the ball and made the extra pass."
Cotton finished as the second-leading scorer with 17 points, going 5-of-6 from bonus range.
As a team, Jax State was 10-of-15 from 3-point land and held a 48-34 lead at the intermission which matched their biggest lead of the half.
"There's only been one game in this league that we led it to half, and that was Florida International," said Harper. "We trailed every other game. And I thought that was the difference in the game when we played them at Middle (Tennessee), is they just they hit us quick, and it was 15-2 before we knew what hit us."
Middle Tennessee scored the first six points of the second half, but
Koree Cotton answered with an 8-0 run on his own, highlighted by recovering a deflected pass in the back court and converting a 3-pointer at the top of the key as the shot clock expired. Pierre pushed the lead to 18 with a jumper in the lane, giving Jax State a 58-40 lead at the 15:26 media timeout.
Pierre ended a Jax State drought which saw MTSU go on a 10-0 run and cut the lead to eight with a 3-pointer from the top of the key at the 11:39 mark for his 30th point of the game. His ninth 3-pointer of the night came at the 9:00 mark and put the Gamecocks up 66-54.
Michael Houge was also in double-figures with 13 points, going 6-of-10 from the field.
As a team, Jax State finished 16-of-29 (55.2%) from 3-point range and were good on 44.6% of their field goal attempts to pick up their seventh-straight victory. Defensively, the Gamecocks held Middle Tennessee 10 points lower than their season average from the field at 35.7%.
