WATCH: Massive, bench-clearing fight breaks out at the end of college basketball game
There was a massive, bench-clearing brawl at the end of the North Florida–Austin Peay college basketball game on Saturday night. Austin Peay’s Cameron Copeland bounced the basketball in the closing seconds and appeared to be going in for a celebratory dunk. Austin Peay was up 72-71 and the game was pretty much over. But North Florida’s Jonathan Aybar was having none of the celebration in the final seconds. Right as the buzzer sounded, Copeland was going into the hoop, but Aybar absolutely drilled him in mid-air, sending Copeland crashing down to the ground on the baseline. Copeland immediately got up from the ground, ran up to push Aybar, and that’s what sparked the massive fight between the two teams.
Check it out below.
It was a wild fight that took several minutes to separate the two teams. There were several different personnel members trying to separate the players from both teams. Austin Peay’s Carlos Paez had a North Florida player in a headlock, trying to slam him down. The rest of it, it’s just pure chaos on the floor with several players tangled up at once. It gets complicated to figure out who’s doing what out there. You can try to decipher what happened in the fight by watching the video for yourself. Once the teams are finally separated, you can see the North Florida players running into the locker room at the end of the clip.
Following the fight, Austin Peay finally won the game, 73-71. With the win, Austin Peay snapped their 11-game losing streak. The Ospreys were led by Carter Hendricksen, who pumped in 21 points and grabbed six rebounds. Jose Placer and Jarius Hicklen pumped in 14 points each for North Florida.
Shon Robinson pumped in 16 points for Austin Peay in the victory to help them snap their losing streak.
Both teams play next Wednesday. Austin Peay will be visiting Stetson, whereas North Florida is going to host Eastern Kentucky.