Eastern Michigan Athletics
Eastern Michigan University
Illinois
Men's Basketball Falls at Illinois
12/28/2008 3:54:25 PM | Men's Basketball
Eagles drop non-conference tilt, 62-53
Box score.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Eastern Michigan University men’s basketball team dropped a 62-53 non-conference game to the University of Illinois here Sunday afternoon, Dec. 28, at Assembly Hall.
The loss drops head coach Charles E. Ramsey’s Eagles to 2-10 on the year while Illinois improves to 12-1.
EMU junior center Justin Dobbins (Cleveland, Ohio-Glenville) led the Eagles with 14 points before fouling out at the 6:24 left in the game. Redshirt sophomore Brandon Bowdry (St. Louis, Mo.-Taylor (Mich.) Truman) scored13 and sophomore Solomon Farris (Detroit, Mich.-Osborn) added 12.
Illinois was led by 7-foot center Mike Tisdale with a game-high 25 points.
Eastern trailed by just three, 26-23, at the half, and the second half was almost a carbon copy with Illinois out-scoring Eastern, 36-30, to post the 62-53 victory.
Dobbins jump-started EMU in the early stages of the game, scoring 10 of the Eagles’ first 15 points of the game to keep it close in the
Eastern came up with a big sequence late in the first half. Trailing by a 26-17 margin with 2:21 left, Tyler Jones (Belleville, Mich.-Belleville) made two free throws to cut it to 26-19. Dobbins followed up with a layup and was fouled with 27.5 left to make it 26-21. When Dobbins missed the charity toss, Will Cooper (Detroit, Mich.-Pershing-Bridgton) rebounded the missed free toss and laid it in to make it 26-23 in favor of Illinois.
Cooper missed the free throw and neither team was able to score over the final 20 seconds to give the Illini the three-point lead at intermission.
Dobbins led all scorers in the first half with 12 while Illinois was paced by 7-foot Mike Tisdale with eight. Eastern shot 39.5 (9-of-23) from the field in the first half while Illinois was making just 34.5 percent of its shots (10-of-29). Eastern also held a 19-16 advantage on the boards. Illinois jumped out to a quick 37-28 lead with 15:29 left in the game before Bowdry cut the advantage to six with a reverse layup and a free throw to make it 37-31 at the 15-minute mark. The home squad built its first double-digit lead of the second half, 43-33, when Tisdale hit back-to-back shots, the second with13:20 left in the game.
After increasing its lead to 12, 45-33, it looked like the Eagles would suffer a major setback when Dobbins picked up his fourth personal foul of the game and went to the bench with 11:30 left.
EMU did not allow the Illini to take advantage of Dobbins’ absence, however, and kept the lead under double figures until Dobbins was able to return with seven minutes left.
His return did not last long as he was whistled for his fifth personal with 6:24 left in the contest and the Illinois kept the lead the rest of the way.
