BOX SCORE

JACKSONVILLE – Stephen Hall and Trenton Marshall combined for 35 points and the Jacksonville State basketball team escaped Pete Mathews Coliseum with a 68-65 win over Eastern Kentucky on Thursday night.

Hall, a sophomore from Birmingham, went 6-of-9 from the floor to net a team-high 18 points, while junior Trenton Marshall added 17 to help the Gamecocks (6-8, 2-2 Ohio Valley Conference) snap their four-game losing skid and tie the all-time series with the Colonels (10-6, 3-2 OVC) at 7-7. A home-dominated series, the Gamecocks won their fifth in a row over the Colonels at home.

Marshall, a native of Garyville, La., scored nine in the first half and eight in the second, going 7-for-7 from inside the arc and 0-for-5 from beyond it. He also pulled in seven boards and scored five of his points in the final four minutes to propel the Gamecocks to the win. Junior Jeremy Bynum, who scored eight points for JSU, made his mark on the glass by pulling in a career-high nine boards.

EKU got 20 points from Justin Stommes, who used a 7-for-13 effort from the floor. Spencer Perrin added 15 and grabbed a team-high five boards on a night that saw JSU outrebound the Colonels, 33-26. The Colonels, who lead the OVC and are second nationally with 10.2 3-pointers a game, connected on just six of their 26 attempts from behind the arc in their sixth loss in eight road games this season.

Senior Amadou Mbodji also pitched in eight points for the Gamecocks, who shot 55 percent from the floor while limiting EKU to a 41 percent night from the field. JSU hit 21 of its 26 free throws, an 81 percent clip, to hold on to the top free throw percentage in the league.

The Gamecocks grabbed the early lead after scoring the game's first 11 points, five of which were put in by Marshall. He ended the half with nine, two shy of Hall's team-high 11. Bynum grabbed seven rebounds in the first 20 minutes, tying his season high and coming within one of his career before the half.

EKU, after failing to get on the board before a Justin Stommes lay in at the 13:33 mark, went on to shoot 36 percent from the floor in the half and took advantage of 13 first-half turnovers from JSU to pull to within 31-27 at the intermission. The Colonels got seven points from Stommes and lost the first-half battle on the glass, 18-11.

The Colonels held on to the momentum out of the gates in the second half, using a small run that saw a Stommes three-point play with 18:07 to play give them their first lead of the night, a 32-31 advantage.

They would stretch the lead to four and maintain it for most of the half before stretching it to 54-48 with just under eight minutes to play. The Gamecocks scored got a triple from John Barnes and a layup from Amadou Mbodji to cut it to one, and after the two exchanged buckets, a Marshall runner with 3:26 to play gave JSU a 57-56 advantage.

The Gamecocks would never trail again, thanks to a Nick Murphy free throw and a long-range trey from Hall, just his second of the season, that gave them a 61-56 lead with 2:14 remaining.

The Gamecocks will be at home again on Saturday, when they host Morehead State at 4:30 p.m. CT. The game will be the back end of a doubleheader with the JSU women's team, who will face MSU at 2 p.m. Both games will be broadcast live on the JSU Radio Network with Mike Parris calling the action.