Hulett's 22 Points Give Greenville Win

GREENVILLE, S.C., Nov. 29 – DeeAndre Hulett scored a game-high 22 points as the Greenville Groove defeated the Roanoke Dazzle 85-76 Thursday evening at the BI-LO Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The Groove, who led by as many as 27 points in the third quarter, held off a surging Dazzle squad that cut the lead to seven points three times in the second half, but couldn’t get any closer. With the victory, the Groove improve to 4-4 on the season and the Dazzle fall to 3-3.

Greenville led 47-25 at halftime behind forward Rahim Lockhart’s 10 points and five rebounds in the first 20 minutes. The Dazzle’s Danny Earl turned the tide in the second half, scoring eleven third-quarter points, bringing the game within striking distance for the road team. Earl led the Dazzle with 20 points on the evening. But Hulett and the Groove had the answers every time the Dazzle cut the lead to single digits in the fourth quarter, holding on to the nine-point victory.

“He doesn’t lack any confidence at all, that’s why we do what we do to get him the ball and have some opportunities to get looks,” said Groove Head Coach Milton Barnes of DeeAndre Hulett. “We know when we need a bucket, if he is in the right position, he has the green light to go for it.”

The same two teams will meet again Saturday afternoon in Greenville at 1:00 p.m.

“It’s a good situation for us because we’ll have more of a chance to redeem ourselves,” said Roanoke Head Coach Kent Davison. “We’ll get a chance to watch the tape the tape and see things we didn’t do well and try to improve on those things.”

Kenny Gregory scored 13 points for Greenville in his third game with the Groove. Rahim Lockhart finished with 12 points and a team-high nine boards. Marshall Phillips scored 14 points for Roanoke, while Thomas Hamilton finished with 13 points and a game-high 11 rebounds.

Quotes GREENVILLE GROOVE

MILTON BARNES

ON PLAYING ROANOKE'S BIG MEN: It’s tough, you are talking about seven-feet and 350 pounds. With the two of them together that’s 700 pounds, that’s tough to move. The guys did a great job competing for 40 minutes, making sure we had the chance to compete on the boards. We did that, we actually outrebounded them, that’s always a bonus. I told the guys we have to rebound as a team, and if we do that we can win most of the rebounding battles.

ON NEWCOMER KENNY GREGORY: Kenny has done a good job in becoming more comfortable in what we are doing. He is such a good athlete and know he understands what we need him to do on the offensive end. He is starting to come around and I hope he continues to improve as we go along.

ON BEING IN GREENVILLE: It’s great to be home. I know the guys are happy to be home and don’t have to worry about the road. It would be nice to be at full strength because we need all the healthy bodies we can get.

KENNY GREGORY

ON GETTING ADJUSTED: I’m trying to get a feel right now because the first game I didn’t know anything and didn’t practice with the team.

ON BEING IN GREENVILLE: I thank God that I got another opportunity. I feel I am a good enough player to be effective in this league, and the opportunity just flew by me in Mobile. Now I’m going to take full advantage of this second chance.

ROANOKE DAZZLE

HEAD COACH KENT DAVISON

ON THE SECOND HALF TURNAROUND: We started shooting the ball better. We were too content with our jumpshots in the second half.

DANNY EARL

ON THEIR PLAY TONIGHT: It’s frustrating because we came out flat in the first half. Part of that was we just didn’t hit our shots, which you can live with, but is frustrating as a shooter. The other half is just that we didn’t come out with the energy we needed to. You can’t afford to do that, especially on the road against a good team like this.

ON THE TEAM’S SHOOTING: It’s been up and down. Tonight we didn’t shoot well from the three at all and we can’t have that, especially because a lot of them were open looks.