An Upstate upset was not in the cards for coach Eddie Payne’s team on Friday, but the former East Carolina basketball coach enjoyed his first trip back to Greenville nonetheless.
Payne, one of only two ECU coaches to lead Pirate teams to the NCAA tournament, and his South Carolina Upstate Trojans hit 13 3-pointers and trailed by single digits with 2:12 left in the game, but B.J. Tyson and Kentrell Barkley’s career-best scoring games propelled ECU to its third consecutive win, 82-71, in Minges Coliseum.
“Me and my family had probably the best professional experience we ever had here, but it was also a person experience,” said Payne, who was the coach of the 1992-93 East Carolina team that won the Colonial Athletic Association tournament as a seventh seed and earned an NCAA tourney berth against North Carolina.