The University of Charleston men's basketball team held off a tough rally down the stretch from West Virginia State to pick up a 76-70 victory Thursday night at the Wehrle Athletic Arena on the UC campus.
The victory ended a six-game losing streak for the Golden Eagles and was their fifth consecutive win in the rivalry between the two schools.
"We just needed to get the monkey off our back and get one," UC coach Dwaine Osborne said. "We wanted to get back to feeling the way we were feeling in the first semester and we finally got back to doing some of the things that we didn't do that have hurt us recently."
UC led for most of the game and held a commanding 12-point advantage heading into the final minutes, but two consecutive three-point plays from Jayson Hankins and a jumper from Ernest Jenkins saw the Yellow Jackets' big deficit vanish in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
After Terrance Jenkins sank a pair of free throws and made a layup with close to 1:30 left in the game, WVSU made it 68-66 before UC made six free throws and got a big second-chance bucket from Justin Coleman to hold on and give West Virginia State a seventh consecutive loss.
"These guys are growing," West Virginia State coach Bryan Poore said. "We settled down and handled the atmosphere and the intensity of this game and made some plays to get it close. I was proud of how they battled back because it could have been a blowout, but we buckled down and battled and made a run at it."
Throughout Charleston's difficult stretch of games on its six-game losing streak, the Golden Eagles had a tough time holding teams from scoring. On Thursday night, UC was able to get back to doing the two things it knows it needs to do in order to play effectively and win games - keeping WVSU below 40 percent shooting while outrebounding the Yellow Jackets (38-28).
"That's a huge thing for us heading into every game," Osborne said. "We go into games knowing that if we outrebound a team and we hold them below 40 percent, we're going to win the game.
"Our guys played really hard. Our effort was way better than what it has been."
West Virginia State also made a run toward the end of the first half that helped cut into a double-digit deficit and keep it close heading into the locker room. Charleston made just two field goals in the final six minutes of the first half, and had to deal with players like Coleman, Elliott Cole and L.J. Johnson spending time on the bench with two fouls.
But UC stepped it up early in the second half to extend that lead out again, holding WVSU nearly five minutes without a field goal and outscoring the Yellow Jackets 11-4 during that stretch.
"We were able to refocus ourselves and made some big stops and got some big rebounds when we needed to," Osborne said. "I thought we shared the ball really well and we were a little bit more balanced in what we did."
Hankins led the way for West Virginia State with 19 points while Jenkins added 15.
Charleston got a double-double from Coleman, who finished the night with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Cole led the Golden Eagles with 16 points while Johnson added 14 points to go with five rebounds and four assists. Jonathan Tshibuy also reached double figures, scoring 11 points.
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.