Christian Brothers led from start to finish on Thursday night in handing the Lee men's basketball team a 78-63 loss in Gulf South Conference action from Canale Arena.
The Flames were hit with a 20-9 run in the first nine minutes of the contest and could never recover in suffering the defeat to the Bucs. Adam Dieball and Jeff Larkin each tallied 14 points in the opening half to give CBU a comfortable 35-22 advantage at the intermission.
Freshman Jason Landman played the best game of his young career as he finished with 21 points and eight rebounds.
Michael McGuirk, a freshman from White Plains, Ala., added 14 points off the bench while senior Chase Cullen registered 11 points and five rebounds.
All totaled 48 of the 63 points the Flames scored came off the bench.
Larkin paced the home team with 22 points while Dieball ended with 19 and dished off eight assists. Both players ended with three triples.
In a reversal of season averages Christian Brothers as a team shot an efficient 49 percent from the field, 10 percent higher than the Flames were allowing teams to shoot coming into the contest while Lee struggled to find the bottom of the net as it shot just 39.7 percent (25 of 63) from the field, six percent lower than CBU had been allowing on average (45.5 percent).
"We are just lacking focus right now," said head coach Bubba Smith. "It' s disappointing. We had three solid days of work to prepare for this game and I thought for whatever reason we just weren't ready at the opening tip. We missed some wide open looks early in the game and I think some of our lack of execution on the offensive end led to defensive issues tonight but we just didn't do what we needed to do to beat a really good team on the road. We knew what Christian Brothers wanted to do tonight and we didn't provide must resistance. The bottom line is we just werent' good enough tonight and we have to come out with better focus from the start on Saturday because this road isn't going to get an easier."
The Flames did hold a 41-28 advantage on the glass. Lee managed just six assists while committing 14 turnovers while the Bucs took care of the basketball with just nine floor mistakes and moved the ball with 17 assists.
The loss drops the Flames to 11-8 overall and an even 6-6 in conference play. The road as not been kind to coach Smith's club so far this season as they are now just 2-5 away from Walker Arena. The win pulls the Bucs even with Lee at 6-6 in the jumbled GSC standings. As of Thursday 10 teams were within four games of league leader Valdosta State (10-1).
Lee will head just down the road to Jackson to battle Union University on Saturday at 5 p.m. The Flames will continue their difficult four-game road trip next week with trips to the top two teams in the GSC, West Florida and Valdosta State.