Box Score RIO GRANDE, Ohio - Campbellsville University men's basketball did not have the season opener it wanted Friday, falling 83-74 to the University of Miami-Middletown (Ohio) in the Giovanni's Tipoff Classic at the University of Rio Grande.
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"We didn't take the game seriously. We tried to talk to our guys about some things that Miami-Middletown did last year. That's all the information we had on them was last year's stats and results. They'd played well against some really good teams. When you approach a game the way we did, you get the result you got," CU head coach Keith Adkins said.
Miami-Middletown hit a pair of 3-pointers to start the game and never looked back for their first win of the season. The lead stretched to 44-30 at halftime and remained double figures for most of the second half. The Tigers chipped away at the deficit in the final 10 minutes, pulling within a basket, 69-67, with 3:41 remaining, but that was the closest CU was all night.
"Defensively we could not get stops when we needed to, and we fouled too much. When you get outscored by 14 at the free throw line you're going to have trouble winning," Adkins said.
Miami-Middletown converted 24 of its 33 free throws, while the Tigers were 10-of-15 at the charity stripe.
First-year Tigers
Justin Ennis and
Malik Thomas both scored 20 to lead CU, while
Jordan Myers had 10.
Rilwan Bakare led CU's bench with 10 points.
Middletown's Lamar Mallory led all players with 21, followed by 17 from Dexter Robinson, 13 by Jallen Watts and 12 by Akem Freeman.
Tiger senior
Jonas Bohm had a third of CU's 34 rebounds, grabbing 12 boards. CU limited UMM to 23 rebounds.
Campbellsville (0-1) returns to action at Rio Grande on Saturday to meet Ohio University-Chillicothe at 2 p.m. ET.
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