SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Rashawn Rembert put on quite a show in the regular-season finale Friday night at USC Upstate.Unfortunately for the East Tennessee State basketball team, it was mostly a one-man show.Rembert scored a career-high 33 points, with eight 3-pointers, but the Spartans held on for a hard-fought 79-73 victory in the Hodge Center. The win was worth third place in the Atlantic Sun Conference and a home game in the quarterfinals next Tuesday night.For the Bucs (17-14, 10-8), they now have to wait until today’s games involving Lipscomb and North Florida are finished to see their postseason position. A win by both creates a three-way tie for fourth, and ETSU would claim the 4-seed and a home quarterfinal.Lipscomb hosts Stetson, while North Florida plays at last-place Kennesaw State. The only scenario where the Bucs have to travel is if Lipscomb wins and North Florida loses.“It’s where we are, a waiting game,” said a dejected ETSU coach Murry Bartow, after losing to the Spartans for the fifth straight time. “We knew this was going to be a hard game. They’re 7-1 in league play in this building, and most weren’t even close games. We’re down two with 45 seconds left, so it was right there.”Rembert did about all he could do in surpassing his previous high of 31 points. He went 8 of 14 from behind the 3-point arc, raising his school-record total for the season to 96, and also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds. And he had to watch his team lose.“It’s ridiculous,” said Rembert. “Now we’ve got to wait and pull for other teams. I know I never had that in my mind at all.”The junior guard led the Bucs on a frantic rally at the end, after they fell behind by 12 with less than two minutes left.His deep three with 1:13 remaining cut the Upstate lead to seven, then five with a pair of free throws 20 seconds later. After an Upstate turnover inbouding the ball, he swished another bomb from the right corner with 41 seconds left.Suddenly it was a two-point game.“There was no doubt in my mind we were going to win it,” said Rembert, thinking back to a huge rally at Stetson last season that he capped with a winning shot. “It was Stetson all over again.”Instead, the Bucs made a couple of sloppy turnovers and the Spartans (18-13, 11-7) cashed in with four throws to seal the deal.“It got a little too close for comfort,” said Upstate coach Eddie Payne. “Rembert was fantastic; if you give him any space at all, he’s knocking shots down. Other than him, we did a pretty good job defensively.”A sidebar to the contest was the matchup of two of the top three scorers in the A-Sun, with Rembert versus Torrey Craig, the Spartans’ smooth senior forward.Craig was held to just 10 points and saw his season average dip to 16.9, tying him with Jarvis Haywood of Jacksonville. Rembert’s rose to 16.8.In conference games only, Rembert is the top scorer (18.2).“He’s had a great year,” said Bartow. “He’s full of energy, full of life, full of confidence. This was just one of those games where he didn’t have enough help.”Lester Wilson, in fact, was the only other ETSU player to score in double figures, and he got nine of his 12 in the first seven minutes.The Bucs again had no real answer for Ricardo Glenn, the Spartans’ 6-8, 246-pound senior, who matched his career high of 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting and also grabbed 10 rebounds. He had 18 and 15, respectively, in the first meeting of the season with ETSU.Payne said he thought Glenn “probably deserves to be the player of the year in our league.” Bartow might not agree with that, but he knows the big man is a load for anybody in the A-Sun to handle.“Glenn hurt us; we just didn’t have good matchups,” said Bartow. “We did a good job on Craig, but not as a whole defensively. If you look at our losses, we just haven’t been able to get stops.”The Spartans shot 58 percent against them in the second half while scoring 45 points. Jodd Maxey, their other 6-8 forward, finished with 19 points and seven rebounds. He missed just two of his nine shots.The Bucs shot 39 percent, including 13 of 34 from 3-point range. They shore more threes than twos.
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