Box Score
CHARLOTTE, NC – A remarkable comeback attempt by the Livingstone men's basketball team fell short Saturday evening as the Blue Bears fell on the road to the Golden Bulls of Johnson C. Smith University 84-66.
The Blue Bears trailed by as much as 23 points in the game and 21 points in the second half. With five minutes gone in the second half, Livingstone started to make its charge. The Blue Bears trailed 53-32 with 14:27 left in the second stanza, before going on a 13-2 run to get within 10 with 11:57 left.
Johnson C. Smith went back up by 12 with 11:29 on the clock, but Livingstone went on a 6-0 run to get within six points with just over 10 minutes left in the second half. Unfortunately for the Blue Bears, Johnson C. Smith withstood the Livingstone charge and made the critical buckets to take the victory.
Through the first five minutes of the first half neither team was putting many points on the board. Darius Cox made it 4-4 with 15 minutes left, but the Golden Bulls then went on a 19-4 run over the next five minutes and took a 23-8 lead with 10 minutes left.
Johnson C. Smith had opened up a 34-13 lead with 5:14 left and Livingstone briefly cut into the lead and got it down to 34-18 with 3:29 left. The Golden Bulls went back up by 23 with 1:31 left , but the Blue Bears connected on two three-pointers in the last 1:11 to bring the halftime score to 43-26.
Darius Cox scored a career-high 27 points and also pulled down 10 rebounds for his second double-double of the season. No other Blue Bear scored more than seven points.
After shooting only 26 percent in the first half, the Blue Bears shot 39 percent in the second and 32 percent for the game while Johnson C. Smith shot 47 percent from the field including 37.5 percent from three-point range.
With the loss the Blue Bears dropped to 7-5 overall, 3-3 in the conference and 0-1 in the division. Johnson C. Smith improved to 12-4 overall, 7-0 in the conference and 1-0 in the southern division.
The Blue Bears will step out of conference on Tuesday when they head to Newport News, VA to take on the Apprentice School. Earlier this season the Builders defeated Livingstone 86-84 in overtime in Salisbury.
