Charleston jumped out to a quick lead and didn't look back, picking up a 79-65 victory over Urbana on Wednesday night at the Wehrle Athletic Arena.
It was the second win in a row for UC and the first time the Golden Eagles have won back-to-back Mountain East Conference games since the beginning of December.
"One of the keys we wanted to do was show urgency at the start, and I thought we did that," Charleston coach Dwaine Osborne said. "We were sharp on both ends, for the most part, we challenged shots defensively and we got some good looks."
UC was able to get in front early thanks to a good shooting performance and a smothering effort defensively in the opening minutes. Elliott Cole hit three early 3-pointers and helped jump-start the offense to a 22-6 lead while Urbana made just one of its first 11 attempts from the field as Charleston (12-9, 6-9 MEC) held the Blue Knights to just 33 percent shooting for the game.
But once Charleston got out to that large lead, Urbana started to get back into the game - slowly working the deficit down for large stretches.
"I thought we played hard and did some great things, but once we got up like that we just hit cruise control," Osborne said. "That's a mentality problem and we have to do better with that, but that's a big part of learning to win. We've got to be in those situations to learn and now we can go back and teach that to them."
Urbana cut what was at one point a 17-point deficit down to six with less than eight minutes to play, but Charleston was able to respond by going on a quick 7-0 run to get the lead back to 13 points.
From there, the Golden Eagles were able to keep building on the lead - getting 13 second-half points from Keir Anderson, who was one of a handful of players to come up with big plays down the stretch - and close it out for the victory. Urbana's 65 points were the fewest Charleston has allowed against an MEC team this season.
"There were a few times when things were getting close there and we were able to find ourselves, stabilize things and push it back out to a good lead," Osborne said. "We responded pretty well when that came up in the second half."
Anderson came off the bench to score 19 points to lead all scorers. Cole added 14 while Justin Coleman earned his fourth double-double in five games by scoring 11 points and pulling down 17 rebounds.
Jonathan Joseph also reached double figures for UC, scoring 11 points.
Urbana's DeQuan Abrom led the Blue Knights with 16 points and Carlas Jackson and Ethan Snapp both had 15.
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.