Final Stats
GAFFNEY, SC – The Livingstone men's basketball team picked up a quality road victory Saturday, downing the Limestone Saints of Conference Carolinas 65-56.
With the victory, the Blue Bears improved to 3-0 overall, their best start since the 2005-2006 season. The Limestone Saints, who finished 5th in the NCAA Atlantic Region last season and made the NCAA Tournament, fell to 2-2 overall.
Junior forward Tyler Johnson finished with a double-double, scoring 10 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Junior forward Nasir Austin led the team with 15 points while senior guard Quintin Redfern scored 12 points.
The Blue Bears took the first four points of the contest and never relinquished their lead. Livingstone opened up a 10-2 lead over the Saints with just over 10 minutes left to play in the first half. After Limestone cut the lead to four, the Blue Bears pushed their advantage back up to nine points.
Livingstone hit its largest lead of 10 points of the first half with 3:58 left and continued to lead by double digits with 44 seconds remaining. Limestone sank a bucket with 25 seconds left in the first half to get within 28-20, which the teams took into the break.
To start the second half the Blue Bears quickly pushed their lead to 13 points, its largest lead of the night, with 16:29 remaining in the contest. Livingstone continued to lead by 12 with 15:09 left, but the Saints didn't go away quietly as Limestone slowly chipped away at the Blue Bear edge.
Livingstone held a 46-35 lead with 11:57 to play, but the Saints then went on a 15-7 run and cut the Blue Bear advantage all the way down to three points at 53-50 with 6:38 to play. Livingstone got some much-needed points from Quintin Redfern on their next possession to end the Limestone run. The Redfern bucket started an 8-2 Blue Bear run to give Livingstone a 61-52 lead, enough for the Blue Bears to exhale as Livingstone took home the big 65-56 victory.
The Blue Bears shot 41 percent from the field for the game including 33.3 percent from beyond the three-point line. Livingstone also shot 81.3 percent from the charity stripe. After holding the Saints to only 25 percent shooting, the Blue Bears had to weather a hot-shooting Saints team that connected on 54.2 percent of their shots from the field in the second half.
Livingstone's next contest will be a rematch with the Saints as the Blue Bears will host Limestone on Saturday, December 3 at 7:30 p.m. inside New Trent Gym.
