N.C. A&T Aggies Crush Carver:Fred Cleveland Jr. leads team in scoring with a season-high 17 points

A&T MBB Keeps Routine, Blows Out Carver
Aggies replaced their postponed Florida A&M game with Carver College.

EAST GREENSBORO – The North Carolina A&T men’s basketball team defeated the Carver Cougars, 112-46, on Saturday evening inside the Corbett Sports Center in non-conference action.

N.C. A&T head coach Will Jones and his staff scheduled the game during the week after their original two contests against Florida A&M planned for Saturday and Sunday got postponed.

“It was good to be playing,” said Jones. “We were the only team on our side of the division to be able to play tonight, and I thought it was important to try to keep our guys on a normal routine and get a game in this week.”

It was a record-setting offensive onslaught for the Aggies (6-9, 2-0 MEAC) from the tip. Sophomore Fred Cleveland, Jr. scored a season-high 17 points. Senior guard Darus Maddox notched a new career-high with 16 points.

Fifteen different Aggie players scored during the contest, and as a team, N.C. A&T shot 62.1 percent from the field and 60 percent from 3-point range.

“I was happy with Fred Cleveland being able to see the ball go in the basket,” said Jones. “Also, Kenyon Duling in the second half, his shot was able to go down. We’re going to need all these guys as we continue to play this back-to-back schedule.

That first game is a basketball game, and that second game is a fight. We need all our soldiers ready to go, and I thought tonight everybody was able to at least get their feet wet.”

N.C. A&T scored 100-plus points this season for the first time. It is the most points scored by an Aggies team last season versus Mid-Atlantic Christian (123) on Jan. 3.

Senior guard Kameron Langley got the scoring going with a layup in the lane to put the Aggies up, 2-0. The MEAC preseason player of the year finished with four points, four assists and three rebounds in 19 minutes. N.C. A&T led from that point on but looked a little sluggish early. They led by just 15, 42-27, at the half against a team with an average margin of defeat of 59 points.

N.C. A&T exploded in the second half, outscoring the Cougars, 70-19. The Aggies forced Carver into 35 turnovers for the game, leading to 52 points, including 37 fastbreak points. Cleveland led the Aggies with five steals as the Aggies totaled 22 swipes as a team. N.C. A&T also got a whopping 70 points from their bench.

“At halftime, I tried to explain to them that we didn’t want to take things backward,” said Jones. “I thought in the second half, everybody did what we needed them to do and tried to keep the momentum going in our favor.”

Joining Cleveland and Maddox in double-figures were senior guard Kwe Parker and junior guard Kenyon Duling with 11 points each. Junior wing Tyrone Lyons added 10.

Next weekend, N.C. A&T will head to Durham for back-to-back matchups against archrival N.C. Central on Saturday, Jan. 23, and Sunday, Jan. 24.