After winning three straight over the weekend, the Eagles welcomed Webber International to Alico Arena and defeated the Warriors 115-61 for their sixth win of the season.
Besides all the dunks FGCU had, senior Christian Terrell achieved a milestone that only five other Eagles have ever done in reaching 1,000 career points. Teammate Brandon Goodwin reached that accomplishment last year and Terrell joins him, having scored all of them while playing for the Eagles.
“It was a cool accomplishment,” Terrell said. “A lot of my teammates were very excited that I was close, and they just wanted to give me (an) open shot, and I was able to do that, and they help(ed) me out as much as anybody.”
It was one of the most dominating starts for FGCU, as the Eagles opened up the game on a 27-0 run before Joseph Serrano made the first bucket for Webber International.
In between, Johnson had a monster slam-dunk for the seventh and eighth Eagles point, and Terrell also hit two early threes in that run.
FGCU continued to dominate, and with the score 33-6, Terrell reached 1,001 as he buried a three to increase the lead to 30.
“I remember sitting in his house with him and his mom trying to convince him to come to FGCU,” Dooley said. “He got progressively better from his freshman year where he never played to being an all-league caliber player.”
With the game getting out of hand, fan-favorite Darnell Rogers hit his first collegiate three-pointer, and the next two buckets for FGCU came from a dunk from Zach Johnson and an alley-oop to Christian Carlyle.
The Eagles scored 63 points and led by 42 after the first half after shooting 65 percent in the first half.
The Eagles came out of the second half with some different looks, including a 2-3 zone early on, but the Warriors scored six straight, forcing Dooley to call a time out. Right after the break, FGCU set up a play for an alley-oop, this time for Ricky Doyle, for the first points out of the break.
Webber International actually scored 15 of the first 23 points in the second half, but it didn’t last as FGCU got its rhythm offensively while Dooley emptied the bench. The Eagles reached 100 points on two free throws from Antravious Simmons with 7:31 remaining.
Later on, Rogers knocked down two more threes, and Ryan McAdoo scored the final point on a free throw. Every player to appear in the game had at least a point in the win.
“To begin the game, I thought we had really good energy, and the guys shared the ball,” Dooley said. “We got a little sloppy and concerning in the second half with our defense. We thought we guarded pretty well in the first half, but the second we were bad. It’s a shame that some of the players we wanted to get minutes were hurt (Brian Thomas and Dinero Mercurius), so it didn’t help them, but hopefully in the long run it will help the guys that haven’t got a lot of minutes.”
On Saturday, Dec. 2, the Eagles will have a rematch versus Middle Tennessee at 7 p.m., looking to get revenge from an 82-75 loss earlier this month.