Hazzard Earns Milestone as Troy Rolls

Saturday, January 9

Miami, Fla.

7:00 PM

Troy University

FIU

1/10/2010 1:00:00 AM | Basketball (M)

MIAMI – Senior guard Brandon Hazzard scored his 1,000th career point as the Troy Trojans men's basketball rolled over Florida International 84-68 on Saturday night in Sun Belt action.

Hazzard scored a game-high 29 points for the game, one off his season high, but a 3-pointer at the 9:29 mark of the second half gave him the milestone.

“Hazzard had a great night,” head coach Don Maestri said. “He was shooting really well. The guys got him the ball when he was open. When he's scoring, we are in good shape. As long as he is taking good shots, he's deadly.”

Hazzard is the 22nd player in school history to reach the 1,000-point plateau with 1,007 points through 85 career games.

It took just eight seconds and Troy took a 3-0 lead on a triple by Antywan Jones, the Trojans would never trail as 3-pointers by Delk and three baskets by Hazzard helped the team jump out to an early 13-2 lead. Jones set new career highs with six assists and three steals on the night.

Back-to-back treys kept the points coming for Troy as Michael Vogler and Delk stretched Troy's lead to 25-11 with 11:08 left in the first half. Delk scored 17 points and tied his career high with five 3-pointers.

“Tonight was a big challenge for our team,” Maestri said. “FIU was coming off a big win. They are a better basketball team than they were earlier in the year. When they are going on all cylinders they can beat any team in this league.

“We shot the ball really well when the game started. We helped ourselves offensively getting out to a big lead. That really helped our confidence after Thursday.”

After leading by as many as 14, FIU put together an 8-1 run to cut into Troy's lead and with 7:19 remaining in the opening half the Trojans held a 26-19 advantage.

Troy (9-7, 4-1) once again built its lead up to double-digits, but a couple of turnovers and baskets by the Panthers left the score at 38-30 with just more than two minutes left in the opening stanza.

A lay-in by Vernon Taylor once again widened Troy's lead to 10 points and after a miss by the Golden Panthers (5-14, 2-4), Yamene Coleman was able to tap-in a Delk miss at the buzzer to give the Trojans a 40-30 lead at the break.

Shooting was the story in the first half for Troy and was ultimately a story for the game. The team hit 7-of-12 attempts from 3-point range in the half and finished the contest tying the season high with 13 3-pointers on 23 attempts.

It was a back-and-forth game for most of the first 10 minutes of the second half and with 9:29 left Hazzard hit the record basket. The shot gave the Trojans a 61-45 lead – their largest to that point.

Two points by Hazzard thrust the Troy lead all the way to 20 points and Coleman picked up his fourth double-double off a feed from Vogler to make it 76-56. Vogler narrowly missed a double-double with 13 points and eight assists. He also set a career high with five steals.

Coleman's fourth double-double came in the form of 12 points and a career-best 16 rebounds. The 16 boards were the sixth-most in Troy's Division I history, tying him with Cameron Boozer, who accomplished the feat at Hofstra on January 17, 1994.

“Coleman rebounded really well,” Maestri said. “He carried us on the boards. You can't give teams like [FIU] two chances when they miss shots. If they didn't get the ball, it was because of him.

“We still have to get better [as a team] at rebounding defensively.”

The senior transfer tied his career high with 32 minutes played as he grabbed 16 of Troy's 30 rebounds for the game. It was the most rebounds by a Trojan since 2003.

JC Otero scored two for FIU to close out the game's scoring with 23 seconds left. He posted a double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds. Marvin Roberts led Florida International with 27 points.

Troy's next action is a home date with North Texas on Thursday night. Tip-off is set for 7:05 pm in Trojan Arena.