BOCA RATON – This one was easy.
The Florida Atlantic Owls (3-1) were led by sophomore guard Devin Vanterpool (career-high 30 points and a team-high eight rebounds), who was very accurate with his shot selection at a 57.1 percentage rate. He could not be stopped by the College of Coastal Georgia (3-5) in Monday night’s 92-63 home win.
For the player of the game, several of his buckets made came off easy midrange jump shots in the second half as he helped his team build a 50-33 halftime lead into one that grew to more than 20 points over the road opponent. As a team, FAU connected on 45 percent of its field goals in this one to punctuate the rout.
“It starts with these guys [my teammates] setting me up and getting me downhill to getting in my spots to finish,” said Vanterpool, who connected on 12 of his 21 shot attempts. “I just thank them for giving me space to allow that.”
FAU sophomore guard Isaiah Elohim added 16 points to go with six rebounds and one assist. He made seven of his 11 shot attempts at a 63.6 percentage rate. He and Vanterpool, along with fellow guard Kanaan Carlyle (eight points, six rebounds, six assists) combined to grab 20 of FAU’s 52 total rebounds as starting guards, which spoke to their collective dedication to crashing the boards.
“It gets us extra opportunities to get points,” Elohim said. “It starts to trickle down to the whole team. Coach [John Jakus] emphasizes that, so we try to do it the best way we can.”
The chemistry between the FAU players on the court seemed to be flowing well as they combined to commit only nine turnovers while forcing 16 in the process. The Owls went on to score 21 points off those 16 turnovers that the Mariners committed in two halves of play.
“In four games together, I think it [the chemistry] is coming along amazing,” Elohim said. “When we get to December and January, I think we’re going to be a scary team.”
One area that FAU would like to work on is the ability to distribute the ball in an effective manner. The Owls had 14 total assists – two in the second half – against the Mariners in Monday night’s action.
“It starts with us sharing the ball,” Vanterpool said. “Coach likes to preach that. He wants five guys in double figures. We were able to only get four, so almost five. I feel like we followed the game plan as much as we could.”
The other two FAU players in double figures were junior forward Xander Pintelon (13 points, seven rebounds, one assist) and sophomore forward Devin Williams (10 points, five rebounds, no assists).
The five FAU starters accounted for 77 of their team’s 92 total points on Monday night. Meanwhile, on the defensive side of the ball, FAU’s starters registered seven of their team’s 10 blocks and six of their nine steals against Coastal Georgia.
“It’s nice to get a game under our belt with all the time we had off,” head coach John Jakus said. “It’s a weird thing to play two games in two days [Nov. 8; 94-77 win over Charleston; Nov. 9; 88-68 loss to Liberty] so this week has allowed us to work on some things. We’ll continue to get better as we go along.”
The next game for FAU is on Thursday night (Nov. 20) against Pacific (3-1) at Eleanor R. Baldwin Arena. Tip-off 7:00 p.m.