FSU Men Stun No. 11 Salisbury in Senior Day Thriller

On Saturday, Feb. 18, the Frostburg State University men’s basketball team pulled off a historic comeback victory against nationally-ranked Salisbury University in overtime. The home victory was the final regular season game of the 2016-2017 campaign for the Bobcats, who honored seniors Jake Wiegand and Terry Martin before the contest.

The Bobcats faced the Sea Gulls in early January and could not bring home the win, but with the crowd behind them Frostburg knew they had a good chance to pull out the dynamic victory against a ranked team.

The Bobcats came out to start their senior game with Wiegand and Martin in the starting lineup, both full of emotion and nerves as they entered their last game as Frostburg State Bobcats.

In the early stages of the contest, the Bobcats struggled to keep up.  The prolific scoring and athletic defense of the Sea Gulls were the biggest problems for the home team in the first half, and Salisbury took the lead to 16 points to finish out the game’s first period.

In the second half of play, the situation appeared to get worse for FSU, as Salisbury extended their lead to over 20 points. However, the home team caught fire late in the game to force overtime, where the Bobcats eventually completed their dramatic upset by a final score of 86-80. After a slow start offensively, the Bobcats outscored the Sea Gulls 66-44 in the second half and overtime. Frostburg shot a scorching 63% from the field in the second half and 71.4% in overtime.

Junior Tyler Michael finished with 23 points on 7-of-14 shooting. He added three assists and two rebounds in 43 minutes of action. Sophomore Edwin Cole notched a double-double with 18 points and 14 rebounds in 30 minutes.  Freshmen Daniel Alexander and Lawrence Pettis Jr. also finished in double figures with 14 and 10 points respectively. Pettis dished out a game-high seven assists and Alexander was the Bobcats’ second-leading rebounder with five.

Frostburg used a 15-0 run to trim the Sea Gulls lead to seven with 2:39 remaining. Cole and Michael each scored six points, and Pettis  drilled a three in the offensive outburst to help the Bobcats climb back to within single digits. The Bobcats used some clutch shooting near the end of regulation, with foul shots from Pettis and Cole.  In the final moments, Tyler Michael sealed the game with four foul shots to take the six-point victory.

After the victory, members of the FSU team reflected on the 2016-2017 regular season. When asked what was the most memorable thing from the season, Martin said, “The most memorable thing for me was coming back and playing after tearing my ACL.  I was counted out and put down and being able to come back and play it was no better feeling.  And beating Salisbury speaks for itself!”

Despite a difficult stretch to start the campaign, the Bobcats finished the regular season on a 5-6 run against highly competitive conference competition. A dramatic overtime victory against ranked archival Salisbury on senior day proved to be an electrifying conclusion to the regular season.