In their first game back from Christmas break, the Central Connecticut State University men’s basketball team cruised past St. Elizabeth University to a 99-38 victory on Saturday, Dec. 30 at Detrick Gymnasium.
The game was a dominant showing by the Blue Devils, who won by 61 points. It was their second largest margin of victory in program history, eclipsing their 57-point victory against Framingham State University earlier in the season.
Five Central players scored in double digits, with Allan Jeanne-Rose and Kellen Amos leading the way with 15 points each.
Both sides started slow, with the two teams committing several turnovers in the first few minutes.
CCSU began to pick up the pace and went on an 18-0 run, giving them a 29-4 lead with 8:27 left in the half before the Eagles responded with a three-pointer. The first half ended with the Blue Devils on top 46-21.
St. Elizabeth would be held scoreless for nearly 5 minutes as Central went on a 12-0 run and jumped to a 66-26 lead to begin the second half.
The Eagles would end the run with around 11 minutes left to play, only to go scoreless again for the next 5 minutes.
With the game sealed, Central emptied their bench and cruised to the final buzzer, winning 99-38.
Amos, CCSU’s leading scorer in their previous win against Fordham University, talked about the adjustments he has made since the beginning of the season.
“I’m just trying to figure things out,” Amos said. “When the season started, we had some new guys and I was trying to make sure everybody was comfortable … I noticed that when I’m more aggressive, I think we play better, so I basically tried to turn it on.”
Amos added that despite a slow start to the season, his teammates and coaches never lost faith in him.
“I haven’t shot the best yet during the season, but they’re still telling me to keep shooting and still drawing up plays for me,” Amos said. “It only gives me confidence, and as long as you have confidence, you can go out there and do whatever.”
Once the Blue Devils took control of the game midway through the second half, Central head coach Patrick Sellers tested out new lineups and rotations by giving bench players more minutes.
“We’re looking for one more guy to be in that rotation. TJ Holloway is a guy, Matias Rissanen is a guy that we’re looking at that might be able to help us as we go into the conference season,” Sellers said. “We’re hoping that giving those guys some game minutes will help them confidence-wise, and we want to have them down the stretch when we start playing conference.”
With the victory, Central closes out the calendar year with a record of 6-7.
CCSU begins Northeast Conference play on Jan. 4, going on the road to take on Stonehill College.
Sellers added that his team will focus on their own performance instead of Stonehill’s.
“We’re going to have to take this game and look at some of the good things we did. But we’ve got to concentrate on us, our defense, our rebounding, and then getting the ball up in transition and sharing the basketball,” he said.
