GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — Freshman Rashawn Ingelmon scored a game-high 31 points while Osmar Garcia added 27 to lead eighth-ranked Anderson University to an 80-71 win over Tusculum University in South Atlantic Conference men’s basketball action.
The Trojans (26-2, 20-2 SAC) cap a remarkable regular-season, capturing the SAC Championship and the top-seed in next week’s SAC Tournament. AU finishes the year winning four in a row and improve to 12-2 on the road. Tusculum ends its year 10-18 and 6-16 SAC while dropping its final four contests.
It was Senior Day for the Pioneers as Bryce Jackson, TJ Printup, Malachi Hale and Wesley Johnson were honored in pre-game festivities.
Jackson led TU with his 23-point performance while also grabbing nine rebounds and dished out four assists. Printup added 17 markers as he went 6-of-10 from the floor and 5-of-5 from the free throw line. He was also credited with two steals and two blocked shots.
Inglemon connected on five 3-pointers and went 6-of-6 at the charity stripe. It was his second 30-point game of his rookie season, second only to his 36-point outing against Tampa in November.
Garcia went 9-of-10 from the field and 9-of-10 from the foul line to go along with a game-high six assists and hauled in seven boards.
Tusculum jumped out to a 17-12 lead in the first half following a layup from Jai’Den Davis at the 12:08 mark of the first half.
The Trojans responded with an 11-1 spurt started by a triple from Inglemon as AU led 23-18 with 8:01 to go before halftime.
Tusculum would later trim the deficit to three at 29-26 following a floating jumper by Amari Allen. But Anderson closed out the final 2:20 of the period with an 8-2 run as the Trojans to a 37-28 lead into the locker room.
AU started the second half on a 10-4 run in the opening 2:26 to increase its lead to 47-32. The Pioneers scored five straight on a Jackson triple and Damjan Vukcevic hit a hook shot to trim the deficit to 47-37 with 16:29 remaining.
The Trojans would go on a 14-6 spurt over the next three minutes as AU stretched the lead to its largest of the afternoon at 61-43.
With TU down 66-49, the Pioneers responded with an 11-2 run to cut the Anderson lead to single digits at 68-60 with 5:13 remaining. Garcia converted a layup and Inglemon hit a driving layup to go back by a dozen (72-60) with 4:18 on the clock.
The Pioneers got to within nine on three occasions down the home stretch, but that would be as close as Tusculum would get as they suffered their fourth straight loss to the Trojans after rattling off nine straight wins in the series from 2020-2024.
Vukcevic added eight points and five rebounds, while Johnson added six points, four boards and three assists.
For Jackson, he wraps up the season with his eighth 20-point outing and 22nd of his career. His 1,265 career points rank 19th-most by a Pioneer as he moved past Jeremy Fortner (1,248 pts from 1996-2000) and Fred Eschweller (1,253 pts from 1963-1967). In his 83-game career at TU, his 341 free throws made (7th), 432 free throw attempts (7th), .789 free throw percentage (9th) and 120 steals (8th) all rank in Tusculum’s top-10.
Printup finishes the year with 69 steals which are tied for the second-most in a TU single-season and matches the 69 thefts posted by Colin Vaught during the 1985-86 campaign. His 39 blocked shots year are tied for the eighth-most by a Pioneer while his 69 career rejections are seventh in school history.
As a team, the Pioneers finish the season with 103 blocked shots which are eighth in the TU record book while its 217 steals were just shy of breaking into the top-10.
