{"id":5966,"date":"2020-01-23T11:13:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T16:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=5966"},"modified":"2020-01-23T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T16:15:22","slug":"thomas-scores-20-as-eagles-defeat-manatees-77-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/01\/23\/thomas-scores-20-as-eagles-defeat-manatees-77-72\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas scores 20 as Eagles defeat Manatees 77-72"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Polk State Eagles soared to a 77-72 victory over the State College of Florida Manatees (No. 4 FCSAA) tonight in Winter Haven.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
VannAubrey Thomas. Polk State vs State College of Florida. Winter Haven, Fla. Jan. 22, 2020. (Photo by Tom Hagerty, Polk State.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Eagles got off to a slow start in the first half and trailed 14-8 at the 14-minute mark. Fighting back, they took a 34-33 lead with 48 seconds left before ending the half down 35-34.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe key to the turnaround was we started defending a lot better,\u201d said Head Coach Brandon Giles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe made a couple of rotations and then the ball started popping a lot more as well. Plus we were getting stops and that was turning into good offense for us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk State took a 49-47 lead with 12 minutes remaining and never trailed the rest of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VannAubrey Thomas lead the Eagles with 20 points, making five of eight three-point shots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVannAubrey Thomas was huge for us off the bench, especially with him not getting the minutes he\u2019s probably wanted these last couple of games,\u201d said Giles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut he definitely stepped up huge this game. We ask our guys to respond at times of adversity and VannAubrey Thomas definitely did that tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tekorian \u201cTK\u201d Smith finished with 18 points and made some key three-pointers in the second half to help preserve the lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBig-time players make big-time shots, and TK made some big-time shots tonight,\u201d said Giles. \u201cWhen he\u2019s hitting shots like that he\u2019s just hard to guard. There\u2019s not much the defense can do with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarence Jackson posted a double-double, scoring 15 points and grabbing 17 rebounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With their 15th<\/sup> win, the Eagles topped last season\u2019s high of 14 and became the first Polk State team since 2015-16 to reach that number. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice but we definitely don\u2019t want to stop here at 15,\u201d said Giles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I got this job in 2017 I knew it would take time to build it to where we wanted to get to. For this season our goal is to win a championship and if we can go get eight more wins we might have that championship, so we\u2019re excited about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Eagles (15-6, 3-2, No. 8 FCSAA) return to action Saturday with a non-conference game against Impact Academy at 2 p.m. in Winter Haven. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Polk State Eagles soared to a 77-72 victory over the State College of Florida Manatees (No. 4 FCSAA) tonight in Winter Haven.   The Eagles got off to a slow… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"31","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polk-state-college-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}