Facing the team that ended the Bucs’ season last year, Dimeco Childress helped make sure the outcome was different this time.
Childress scored a career-high 35 points as the ETSU men’s basketball team dismantled the Georgia Southern Eagles, 100-65, last Saturday afternoon at Memorial Center.
The Bucs (12-9, 5-5) had their season ended last year at the hands of Georgia Southern in a 72-64 loss in the Bucs first game of the Southern Conference Tournament. Childress, for one, remembered the result of last year’s meeting.
“Once we got them down, we remembered what they did to us in the tournament last year and we wanted to keep them down,” said Childress, who shot 14-for-22 from the field, including 5-for-7 on three-point attempts.
ETSU used spurts of 8-0 and 11-0 to distance it from the Eagles (12-9, 5-5), including an 11-0 run that put the Bucs up by 13 at 42-29 with 3:37 to go in the first half. Childress got the stretch started with a jumper and added a three-pointer for five of his 20 first-half points.
“My first (shot), then second and third shots went down and everything started clicking,” said Childress, whose previous career-high was 30 against Vanderbilt on Nov. 24, 2000.
The Bucs’ senior guard then closed out the first half scoring with a fall-away jumper as time expired in the first half, giving ETSU a 51-37 advantage at intermission.
Coming into Saturday’s contest, head coach Ed DeChellis was looking for someone to step up their game and play “out of their mind” and he looked right to Childress.
“We needed someone to step up and we looked to him, it was a special game for him,” DeChellis said.
DeChellis and his team knew that Georgia Southern was a team that can go on dangerous offensive stretches and stepped up their defense to make the Eagles play a half court game.
“We had to make them play a little more half court and we had to limit their spurts,” DeChellis said.
After a basket by Georgia Southern’s Kashien Latham to open the second half and a bucket from the Eagles’ Julius Jenkins, the Bucs responded with a 9-0 run to extend their lead to 22 points at 63-41 and did not stop there.
The Bucs proceeded to outscore Georgia Southern 21-8 throughout the first 7:43 of the second half, pushing their lead to 29 points at 74-45 after a Childress dunk as 11:22 remained in the game.
ETSU continued to increase its lead. Childress canned two free-throws with 8:21 remaining in the game to tie his career-high of 30, then nailed a three-pointer with 7:30 remaining that not only topped his previous career-best, but also gave the Bucs their largest lead of the game, 36 points, at 87-51.
“They came out motivated and for whatever reason we didn’t,” said Georgia Southern head coach Jeff Price. “He (Childress) made some tough shots and had a tremendous day shooting the basketball.”
Childress’ final basket of the night came on a jumper with 2:51 remaining giving his team a 94-59 lead, but plenty of Childress’ teammates were also very instrumental in the Bucs’ 100-65 victory over the Eagles, who came into the game tied for first place in the SoCon South Division.
“I’m very, very proud of our team effort this afternoon,” DeChellis said. “We’re starting to believe in ourselves, it was a great team effort.
“They have everyone back (from last season’s SoCon tourney game) and we didn’t have six guys who played in last year’s game. We didn’t talk about revenge, we talked about our team and getting better.”
The Bucs had four players reach double figures in the scoring column, including freshman Tiras Wade (16), who had a complete game with nine rebounds, six assists and two steals, both of which led to breakaway dunks.
Jerald Fields (14) and Ryan Lawson (10) also reached double figures in the scoring column. Fields went 3-for-6 from the field and 8-for-9 from the free throw line, while Lawson went 3-for-8 from the floor, including 2-for-5 on his three-point attempts.
Lawson also went 2-for-2 from the free-throw line, making him 33-for-36 on the season.
Zakee Wadood grabbed nine rebounds and had three blocked shots for the Bucs. Wadood currently leads the team and the Southern Conference in rebounding with a 9.1 rebounds per game average.
Georgia Southern was led by Jenkins’ 16 points with Latham (15) and Sean Peterson (10) also reaching double-figures.
The Bucs will next face Western Carolina at 7 p.m. tonight in Cullowhee, N.C.
ETSU will return home on Saturday to face SoCon North Division leader Davidson College.

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