By Duane Cochran
FAIRMONT — For the first nine minutes Tuesday evening at the Joe Retton Arena it looked like a typical, heated Fairmont State-Salem International men’s basketball game.
Slowly but surely, however, FSU began to exert its dominance over the Tigers and eventually the Falcons were able to pull away and cruise to an 82-44 victory.
The win improved Fairmont State to 3-0 overall and to 1-0 in the West Virginia Conference. Salem, meanwhile, fell to 0-4 overall and to 0-1 in the league.
Leading by nine with 10 minutes left in the opening half, the Falcons used a barrage of 3-point field goals to open a 40-27 advantage at the break. Then Fairmont started the second half with a 21-2 spurt and the contest was never close again.
“In the halftime locker room coach (Tim Murphy) told us to pick it up on defense at the start of the second half and try to end any thoughts they might have about coming back on us,” said FSU sophomore guard Steve Custis. “In the first half we did alright on defense, but in the second half I thought our defense was much better.”
Custis was the catalyst for Fairmont all evening in the win. He led all scorers in the game with 24 points and was able to get to the rim and finish, hit shots from the outside and convert on his opportunities at the foul line.
“This is a rivalry game for us and we tried tonight to come out and play hard, but to be honest I think we started a little slow,” said Custis. “Eventually we picked it up and got ourselves going.
“Personally I tried to attack the rim more tonight. I felt better out there this evening than I did in our first two games. When my shot isn’t falling I look to drive, but tonight it kind of seemed like both things, inside and outside, were working for me so I just tried to go with it and play the game hard.”
Junior point guard Erv McFadden chipped in a career-high 11 points in an FSU uniform. He also added three assists.
Fairmont used a balanced attack offensively which saw 12 of the 13 players who hit the floor for the Falcons score. Dan Bruner added nine points, Isaac Thornton contributed eight points and five rebounds and Pete O’Connor came off the bench and finished with seven points.
FSU’s defense held Salem to 38.3 percent shooting from the field (18-of-47), forced 27 turnovers and recorded 16 steals.
“Salem came out with a really good game plan against us because they ran the shot clock down in the first half and made us guard them,” said FSU coach Tim Murphy. “That took possessions away from us and they forced our defense to breakdown a few times there late in the shot clock. They really did a nice job with it.
“We really wanted to stretch the lead out early, but they kind of prevented us from doing that. I told the guys at halftime if we don’t play better defense in the second half and get this lead stretched out they’re going to get some confidence and we’re going to be in for a game and a battle for the rest of the evening. Luckily our kids kind of took that to heart and really took over the game at the start of the second half.”
Salem was led by Dominic Chappell’s 15 points. The Tigers also got 11 points from Ivan Jovici, six points from Tori Patton and five points apiece from North Marion High School graduate Sam Smith and Milorad Adasevic.
Fairmont State will now break for the Thanksgiving holiday and return to practice on Saturday. The Falcons will be back in action Tuesday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m. when they host Ohio Valley University in a WVC game at the Joe Retton Arena.
