App State men’s basketball defeated William & Mary Sunday 79-76 at home, despite blowing a 19-point lead.
Graduate student guard Jackson Threadgill, junior guard Dior Conners, senior forward Jalil Beaubrun, redshirt senior guard Myles Tate and graduate student forward CJ Huntley started the game for the Mountaineers, the same starting group as the previous game against Queens.
The first 12 minutes of the game was a back-and-forth affair between both teams. Huntley and junior guard Jamil Muttilib combined for the Mountaineers’ first 11 points of the contest.
The game was tied at 20, but the Black and Gold took off from there. A 14-0 run helped catapult them to a 42-30 halftime lead. Muttilib had four 3-pointers in the first half and all 12 of his points came in the opening frame. App State made 10 shots from behind the arc in the first half, compared to just 4 from William & Mary.
The second half started and the Mountaineers picked up right where they left off. Beaubrun made a three with 17:36 remaining to get the lead to a game-high 19 points. He was the seventh player to make a triple, and is tied for the most this season with the St. Andrews game.
App State’s lead only crumbled from there. The Mountaineers were outscored 42-26 by the Tribe the rest of the way and only made 1 three-pointer during that stretch. Despite this, Tate took over the scoring for the Mountaineers. He had 15 points in the final 14 minutes of the game and finished the game with 10 assists, his first double-double as a Mountaineer.
The game got close in a hurry, with William & Mary making it a two-point game with 2:04 remaining, and the game was as close as four for the rest of the day. With 19 seconds left on the clock, forward Noah Collier converted a three-point play to tie the game at 76.
App State wanted to win it in regulation. Tate dribbled the clock all the way down to three seconds before getting double-teamed and passing it to Conners, who drilled the game-winning three-pointer with 0.2 seconds left on the clock.
The Tribe had no time to put up a full-court heave and the game was over. Conners was mobbed at midcourt by his teammates.
Tate led the way in scoring and in assists with 20 and 10, and Beaubrun led the team in rebounding with seven. The Black and Gold made a season-high 15 threes, but once again struggled at the line, going 12 for 24.
The Mountaineers will spend their Thanksgiving week in Wilmington at the Live Oak Bank Holiday Classic. App State will play three games in four days, and the first game against Sam Houston State will tip off Wednesday at 4 p.m. and will be streamed live on FloCollege.
