By Jeff Hartsell

Freshmen at The Citadel have a lot to learn. And on Monday night, they learned how to celebrate a big basketball victory.

Coach Ed Conroy started the water fight in the locker room, but Bulldogs players finished it by drenching their coach in celebration of a remarkable comeback. The Citadel was down by 17 points to rival Charleston Southern before rallying for a 76-73 victory before 1,521 fans at McAlister Field House.

"Those freshmen might have overstepped their bounds a little bit," Conroy joked after his 3-3 team rang up its first victory over a Division I squad this season.

The second-year coach will happily accept more overstepping from his freshmen, who were in third grade the last time The Citadel defeated Charleston Southern, in 1997-98.

A quartet of knobs came up big as the Bulldogs came from 10 down at halftime to win for the second straight game. Zach Urbanus scored 21 points, Cameron Wells added 15 and Austin Dahn and Phillip Pandak had 11 each. The Bulldogs' lone senior, Demetrius Nelson, added 12 points and eight rebounds.

"I've said since the beginning, these guys have it in them," Nelson said of the freshmen. "I've got a lot of pride, a lot of things I feel for those guys, and they came through for us tonight."

CSU coach Barclay Radebaugh, whose team fell to 3-3, is relying on four freshmen himself. Rookies Jamarco Warren and Omar Carter led the Bucs with 22 and 17 points, respectively, but hot first-half shooting could not cover up CSU's struggles on defense and an off night for senior guard Chris Moore, who was 2 of 9 from 3-point range for 14 points.

"We were a different team in the second half," said Radebaugh, whose team sizzled on 9-of-17 from 3-point range in the first half. "We executed well in the first half, but we made shots and masked a little bit our poor defense. Their execution was very good, and we allowed them to do that.

"When you allow a team that runs that style to execute, then they are in their practiced situation, and they had no resistance from us. It was just masked in the first half, because we made so many threes."

Despite deficits of 38-21 late in the half and 41-31 at the break, Conroy recognized as much and told his players, "We're not changing a thing."

"We just had to come out and play harder, cut harder and get on the floor for loose balls, and they really responded," Conroy said.

The Bulldogs outrebounded CSU by 23-14 in the second half, and held the Bucs to 4 of 16 on 3-pointers. The Citadel shot 55.6 percent for the game, including 11 of 22 on 3-pointers.

The Citadel took its first lead at 65-64 on a 3-pointer by Urbanus, who made 5 of 6 on the night. The rookie from Austin, Texas, hit another trey as the Bulldogs scored nine straight points for a 74-66 lead with just 34 seconds left.

CSU gave itself a chance by scoring seven points in the final 25 seconds, a trey from Moore making it 75-73 with two seconds left. The Citadel's Jon Brick hit one free throw, and Shelton Carter's heave at the buzzer was off the mark.

CSU's Warren, a mop-topped 5-10 and 162 pounds, showed why he is the leading career scorer at Gainesville (Ga.) High School. He knocked down 4 of 5 3-pointers in the first half, including a couple of the falling-away variety, and scored 14 points as CSU bolted to a 38-21 lead.

The Bulldogs did well to work the deficit down to 41-31 by the break. Pandak and Urbanus, who had 11 first-half points, knocked down treys and Wells drove quickly to the basket as The Citadel staged a 10-3 run in the final 3:08 of the half.

The Bulldogs shot 60 percent in the first half, but CSU scored 15 points off 10 Citadel turnovers, and outrebounded the Bulldogs 5-0 on the offensive glass.

The Citadel opens Southern Conference play Saturday at Chattanooga. CSU plays College of Charleston on Wednesday night at North Charleston Coliseum.

Notes

Charleston Southern's Chris Moore and freshman forward Omar Carter earned Big South player of the week and freshman of the week honors, respectively, for the week of Nov. 19-25.