Columbus State University Athletics

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By: Josh Fuller

COLUMBUS – Despite a slow start, the Columbus State University men's basketball team grabbed an 81-75 victory over North Georgia Wednesday night in Peach Belt Conference action. The game took place inside the Lumpkin Center.
 
With the win, CSU (15-5, 8-5) jumps into first place in the PBC West Division. Young Harris, who the Cougars play on Saturday, lost on Wednesday to Georgia Southwestern allowing the Cougars to grab first place.
 
"I was pleased in how we responded after the awful start," said CSU head coach Robert Moore. "We could have waited later in the game to make a run, but the guys jumped right back in it and built up a nice halftime lead.
 
"It feels good to win three in a row, but we have to keep it up on Saturday against a very good Young Harris team who already beat us once this year."
 
It wasn't a pretty start for Columbus State as North Georgia went up 11-2 almost five minutes into the game. CSU started out just 1-for-10 in shooting before heating up.
 
Over the course of the next several minutes, the Cougars went on an 11-2 run to tie the game at 13 with 9:10 on the clock. Four different players scored in the run with Darius Joell having four of his own.

After North Georgia hit a 3, Marcus Dixon laid one in and John Lambert hit a 3 to put the Cougars in front for the first time in the game at 18-16.
 
The two sides would exchange buckets a few times until the Cougars had another dominating run in them. Down 23-22 with under six left in the half, a Lambert 3 jumpstarted a 12-0 spurt for CSU giving the Cougars a 34-23 lead. JaCori Payne had eight of the 12 for the Cougars nailing two 3's in the run.
 
North Georgia (11-10, 7-5) cut the lead to 36-29 at the half.
 
The second half started with an Arben Camaj jumper for CSU before UNG went on a quick 7-0 run to pull within two (38-36) of the lead just two and a half minutes into the half.
 
The Cougars slowly built the lead back out to 47-38 with 14:06 to play, but the Nighthawks stayed in the game cutting the lead to just three points two minutes later.
 
Up 51-48, Columbus State did its best to put the game away. The Cougars held UNG without a field goal from the 12:51 mark to the 7:25 mark, going on a 12-2 run to go up 63-50. Michael Graham and Dixon each had four in the spurt.
 
North Georgia would trail by double digits until the final two minutes when it made a last ditch effort at the lead.  However, CSU held the Nighthawks off to pick up its 14^th straight regular season win at home.
 
Payne led all scorers with 19 points, while Joell and Dixon had 13. Dixon had a monster night on the boards grabbing a season-best 18 rebounds. It was his seventh double-double of the year.
 
As a team, CSU shot 46.3 percent (31-for-67) overall, but just 27.8 percent (5-for-18) from 3. At the free throw line, the Cougars shot 63.6 percent (14-for-22).
 
UNG shot 41.9 percent (26-for-62) and made just three of its 17 3-point attempts. From the line, the Nighthawks shot 60.6 percent (20-for-33).
 
The Cougars will return to action on Saturday hosting Young Harris at 3:30 p.m.