January 24, 2019 – Admir Besovic, a seven-foot transfer from Montana University, recorded a season-high 22 points and made one of the most spectacular defensive plays of the night to help the Saints men’s basketball team get a 73-70 win over Florida State College-Jacksonville in overtime Wednesday night.
Leading by just one point with 15 seconds to play in overtime, the Saints failed to score and the Blue Wave had an opportunity to steal a win. Instead, it was Besovic who would steal a pass at half court and feed Brady Fernandes for a layup to make the final margin.
“We did a great job of forcing the pass on that play,” said SF head coach Chris Mowry. “Admir played a great game tonight on both ends.”
Besovic led the Saints with 22 points while Fernandes scored 20 and Isaiah Islam 10.
The Saints (13-9, 2-3 MFC) will travel to Daytona Saturday to take on the Falcons in a game scheduled to start at 4 p.m.
Meanwhile, the Saints women’s basketball team jumped out to a big lead early and were never threatened in a 67-47 win over FSCJ Wednesday night at the SF gymnasium.
The Saints pulled out to an 11-1 lead three minutes into the game and stretched the lead to 22-8 at the end of the first quarter. A 3-pointer by Janasia Law gave the Saints their largest lead of the first half at 36-15 and the Saints carried a 20-point lead into the half.
“I thought we came out pretty good in the first quarter, but when the shots didn’t fall in the third we sort of lost our momentum,” said Saints head coach Chanda Stebbins.
SF built pulled out to a 35-point lead (54-19) in the closing minutes of the third quarter, mostly due to a defensive effort that held the Blue Wave to under 30% shooting from the field.
“We have to take more pride in our defense. We held them scoreless for long stretches but I didn’t see that translate to the body language and energy that I would hope it would,” said Stebbins.
Chardell Jones led the Saints with 14 points while Law and Rhea Smith scored 12 apiece.
SF improves to 13-7 overall and 3-1 in the Mid-Florida Conference. The Saints will also travel to Daytona this weekend when they to try to avenge their only conference loss when they take on the Falcons in a game scheduled to tip off Saturday at 2 p.m.
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