Rarely has a starting five been depended on more than during East Carolina’s basketball game against Cincinnati on Saturday.
Only one reserve, Clarence Williams, got in the game in the second half of the Pirates’s 65-56 loss in Minges Coliseum, and he logged just three minutes. The rest of the time, it was starters Prince Williams, B.J. Tyson, Kentrell Barkley, Caleb White and Mike Zangari as Clarence Williams, Lance Tejada and Michel Nzege totaled only 16 combined minutes, 13 of them before halftime.
Nevertheless, ECU (11-17, 3-12 American Athletic Conference), led by an outstanding performance from Barkley, cut the Bearcats’ lead to 56-54 with 5:33 left, and were down only five points — 61-56 — with 1:19 to go.