University of Charleston men's basketball coach Dwaine Osborne has seen stretches of games where his Golden Eagles can't find the bottom of the net. He saw one of those Wednesday night, when UC went nearly eight minutes without a field goal.
Yet he's also seen the opposite, those spurts where shots fall and points come quickly. He saw some of those, too, Wednesday, and it carried the Golden Eagles into the quarterfinals of the Mountain East Conference tournament.
Buoyed by a game-high 28 points from Elliott Cole, Charleston sent Urbana home in the tournament's first round, beating the Blue Knights 76-62 at the Civic Center.
The Golden Eagles' prize for surviving that first round is a 6 p.m. Friday date with the nation's No. 1 team, Fairmont State. The Falcons took the first regular-season game in Fairmont, 95-78, but the Golden Eagles kept things close in the rematch at the Wehrle Athletic Arena, ultimately falling 92-86.
Osborne said that even if those scoring surges come, any cold spells against the Falcons could be fatal.
"It balances itself out at times," Osborne said, "and you hope those runs are coming. But to beat the No. 1 team in the country, Fairmont State, we're going to have to be really efficient. You can't have droughts like that. You're going to have to be efficient and sustain that for 40 minutes."
The Golden Eagles (15-14) just needed a little time for their first-half offensive fortunes to turn around. UC suffered through a frigid stretch where it missed everything - 3-pointers, bunny shots, layups, free throws - and went 7 minutes, 48 seconds without making a field goal.
Urbana wasn't lighting the nets on fire either, but Charleston's woes were such that the Golden Eagles trailed 11-6 on Charles Sweatt-Washington's tip-in with 11:35 left in the half. Yet, as bad as the first part of the first half was for Charleston, the second part was a seismic shift.
A couple of Justin Coleman putbacks finally ended UC's field goal drought and cut the Urbana lead to 11-10. That energized the team, and after making just 4 of their first 17 shots, the Golden Eagles ended the half making 9 of 14.
Cole's night was a prime example of how UC's went overall. He made just 1 of his first 5 shots, went 4 for 7 the rest of the half and led all scorers at the intermission with 12 points. He went 10 for 22 in the game and added six rebounds.
"It was just about not settling," Cole said. "I felt like I took bad shots and that's why I missed them early. But as long as we kept up our defense and got most of our points in transition, we could control the game. I started taking better shots and that's why they started falling."
The Golden Eagles made 3 of their first 4 shots in the second half and pushed their lead to as many as 22 points with 11:32 left in the game. Urbana (12-17) helped Charleston's cause with its ironclad, albeit misguided, devotion to the 3-point shot. The Blue Knights put up 23 3-pointers and only three went through the net.
"We shot some deep ones there early," Urbana coach Rob Summers said. "We didn't move the ball like we did [in the regular-season finale win] against Notre Dame. We had some good inside-outside 3s. We were in transition a lot. Today, it was a lot of swinging it around the perimeter. I told the guys at halftime that you're open from that far away because it's a bad shot."
Jahmere Howze led Urbana with 18 points and 18 rebounds. Keir Anderson added 15 points for Charleston and Coleman finished with 11 points and 14 rebounds.
Now the Falcons are on the horizon, and Anderson said Thursday's opportunity to rest and prepare for Fairmont State will be crucial.
"This day off is everything for us," he said. "The coaches do a great job of preparing us for everything, every game. We'll just stick to our regular routine and get after it."
Contact Derek Redd at 304-348-1712 or derek.redd@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @derekredd.