Dec. 22, 2001

Final Stats

The Cleveland State men's basketball team took a quick 8-1 lead against Prairie View A & M and never looked back, posting a 90-53 win and giving Head Coach Rollie Massimino career victory number 499.

Tahric Gosley (Philadelphia, Penn./Simon Gratz) led the Vikings with a career high 18 points and tied a career high by grabbing 10 rebounds. It was the junior's first career double-double. The 6-8 forward connected on 7-12 from the field and 4-6 from the free-throw line.

"Tahric has been doing extremely well the last month and continues to improve every day," noted Massimino. Each game we proceed a step forward to get into the position where we need to be."

Freshman Percell Coles (Philadelphia, Penn./Simon Gratz) also had a career high with 17 points, 15 coming on 3-pointers. The 6-2 guard shot 5-8 from behind the arc.

The Vikings were able to take advantage of one of their best shooting performances of the season, dropping in 33 of 65 for 50 percent. On the other side, the CSU defense held the Panthers to just 30 percent. In addition, Prairie View scored just six points in the first 8:45 of the second frame.

CSU built a 42-25-halftime lead on Gosley's 12 points. He got the crowd into the game early on two fast-break dunks off deals from sophomore guard Jermaine Robinson (Philadelphia, Penn./Simon Gratz), his former high school teammate.

In the second half the Vikes came out firing. Gosley again brought the crowd to their feet with a one-handed jam at 15:55 and another one 49 seconds later. CSU kept rolling afterwards, connecting on its next seven three-point attempts. Coles dropped in his last three-pointer with 12 seconds remaining to give the Vikings the 37-point win.

CSU pulled down more rebounds than their opponent for the third time this season. The Vikings will be in action again on Thursday, December 27 at home against Duquesne.