Holding a seven-point lead at halftime, the Bucs turned to their “trademark” tough defense in the second half to distance themselves from Guilford College.
The ETSU men’s basketball team defeated the Guilford Quakers, 90-61, in both teams’ season openers at Brooks Gym last Friday night.
The Bucs’ bench provided ETSU with a spark, particularly in the second half as head coach Ed DeChellis credited his bench with being critical to the team’s victory.
“Our bench did extremely well,” DeChellis said. “If we didn’t have our bench we’d have got beat.”
Freshman Tiras Wade came off the bench to score a team-leading 18 points in just 13 minutes due to foul trouble. Wade scored seven of those points in the Bucs’ 19-2 run in the second half that gave them a 31-point advantage over Guilford.
“He’s (Wade) smooth and he can get his own shot,” DeChellis said of Wade, who shot six of 10 from the field and a perfect four of four from the free throw line.
“If we can straighten him out on the defensive end, he can make you pay when he gets his hands on the ball.”
DeChellis, however, was disappointed with his team’s effort on the defensive end, as he believes they will need to improve if they will be able to compete with the teams that lie ahead on their schedule, including the University of Virginia and South Carolina in the next week.
“I was disappointed in the first half with the way we guarded and in the second we didn’t play well,” he said. “We played well for stretches of about five minutes at a time.”
The Buccaneer defense did step up in the second half, holding the Quakers to just 31 percent shooting from the floor (9-29 fg).
“In the second half we came out to play better defense,” said starting point guard Cliff Decoster. “Defense has been the backbone of our team.”
Decoster had a complete game for ETSU, scoring 13 point to go along with six assists, six rebounds. He explained the Bucs’ slow start as being attributed to first-game jitters.
“It was the first game, first game of the regular season, so we had some nervousness early on,” he said.
The Bucs also received a solid performance from sophomore Jerald Fields with 15 points and team-highs in rebounds (10) and blocks (6) in 26 minutes of action.
Fields also agreed with Decosters’ assessment of the game.
“We were a little shaky at first, but in the second half we played defense real well,” Fields said.
ETSU trailed early in the game by as many as five points at 17-12, but took the lead at the 10:24 mark and never lost it.
“Our team played hard and they got away from us (in the second half),” said Guilford College head coach Butch Estes. “They killed us in transition and drove right into the paint all night long.”
Buccaneer post players Fields, junior Isaac Potter and sophomore Zakee Wadood did much of the damage to the Quakers on the inside, helping ETSU outrebound Guilford 50-35 and combining for eight blocked shots.
“Zakee and Jerald did a great job on the glass,” DeChellis said. “I thought they rebounded the ball well.
“Isaac Potter did a great job and he needs to give us what he gave us tonight everynight.”
Potter contributed nine points and three rebounds in 10 minutes played, while Wadood chipped in eight points, eight rebounds and two blocked shots in 23 minutes.
Senior Dimeco Childress also reached double figures in the scoring column for ETSU, with 11 points (3-11 fg) and recorded five assists.
Guilford College’s Jevon Clarke was the game’s top scorer with 20 points on eight of 15 shooting.
The Bucs played the University of Virginia on Sunday, losing 85-62.
They will then travel to Richmond, Va., to face Virginia Commonwealth on Tuesday with the tipoff set for 7:30 p.m.

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