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Cats lose to Appalachian, are routed by Buccaneers
Casey

Western Carolina's Casey Rogers drives past an Appalachian State defender in ASU's 63-59 victory Monday. - Herald photo by Mark Haskett

 Western Carolina lost a close game to arch rival Appalachian State and was routed by East Tennessee in Southern Conference basketball action this past week.

The Catamounts (4-20, 2-9) fell to ASU 63-59 at home Monday after being blasted at East Tennessee 98-47 Saturday.

Western trimmed a 13-point second-half deficit to 56-54 with 3:10 left but could not get any closer in Monday's loss to the Mountaineers in front of 3,121 fans, the largest crowd of the year in the Ramsey Center.

Appalachian was led offensively by Noah Brown with 20 points. Josh Shehan scored 11 points and had 10 rebounds while Donald Payne finished with 10 points and 11 boards.

Willie Freeman scored 14 points for WCU. Cory Largent followed with 13, and Casey Rogers had 12.

The Cats' last lead was 11-8 with 14:42 remaining in the first half. ASU led by as many as six in the first half and was up 28-25 at the break.

Appalachian opened the second half on a 14-4 run to go up 42-29, its largest advantage of the evening. Western responded with 11 straight points over the next four and a half minutes cutting the gap to 42-20 midway through the half.

The Mounties pushed the advantage to six and held on down the stretch as WCU missed four of its last five shots over the final two and a half minutes.

ASU had a 38-33 rebounding advantage. Freeman and Rans Brempong both pulled down eight.

Appalachian turned the ball over 17 times, and Western had 12 turnovers.

The Mounties shot 46.2 percent from the floor, and the Cats shot 34.4 percent.

Completing the WCU scoring were Kori Hatcher with seven, Rans Brempong with six, Emre Atsur with five and Ricky Gandy with two.

Dimeco Childress scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds as East Tennessee destroyed Western 98-47 Saturday. Also scoring in double figures were Renaldo Johnson with 15, Ryan Carson with 14, D.J. McDuffie with 11 and Adrian Meeks with 10.

Western was led by Freeman with 13 points and Brempong with 10.

ETSU dominated from the start and jumped to a 32-6 lead in the first eight minutes. The run was capped by Johnson's dunk. Cliff Decoster had a trio of three-pointers during the run.

The Buccaneers turned 29 WCU turnovers into 47 points while Western scored just six points off of 16 ETSU miscues.

The Bucs received 46 points from the bench compared to eight for Western.

The Cats made just five field goals in the first half and shot 25.5 percent for the game. ETSU made 54.1 percent of its tries.

The Bucs controlled the boards 48-35. Largent was Western's top rebounder with nine.

Rounding out the WCU scoring were Largent with nine, Casey Rogers with seven, Craig Griffin with five, Todd Seibert with two and Ricky Gandy with one.

Back to Sports: 02/08/01.