Memo to the rest of the league: Don't leave Garrison Carr open.

Not that anybody can be expected to lose track of American's precocious freshman after they see tape of him open up a 5-11 can of whoop ass on the visiting Towson Tigers.

Carr came off the bench in the first half and almost singlehandedly willed AU back into a game in which they trailed by 10 points early and appeared about to be blown out of their own gym. It's hard to imagine where AU would have been at the end of the first half without Carr, who scored just under half (14) of AU's 31 first half points. It is even harder to imagine the Eagles pulling out the 74-70 win.

Carr hit 4 of his first 6 shots, all from 3-point range, finishing with 14 in the first half. All but one on catch-and-shoot jumpers while Towson sat back in a zone and watched him firet. Not until well into the second half did Towson manage to get a hand in Carr's face. By the time Towson's 6-4 swingman Marc Pratt came to help when Carr popped off a screen on the left side of the arc and blocked Carr's shot from the foul line extended with 7:47 to play, it was too late. By then Carr had put a 25-point hurting on the Tigers and AU had built a double-digits lead.

Led by Carr's six treys, American hit a school record 15 threes in the win. None of the Eagles treys came in the final five minutes. But they certainly set the table for the three layups that accounted for all of AU's offensive production in the final 5:20.

"The team as a whole got more easy shots because of how Garrison was knocking them down," said AU's Andre Ingram, himself a beneficiary of the laxative effect Carr had on Towson's defense. After being hounded and hassled into a 1-for-6 first half, Ingram knocked down four treys in the second half, finishing with 15 points.

"Garrison hit so many early, they started boxing him. That left people like me and Arvydas (Eitutavicius) open more," Ingram said.

It also opened things up in the post a little. After managing only 4 points in the paint the first half, AU scored 14 inside in the second, including a dunk and a layup by 6-10 junior Brayden Billbe in the final 1:30 after Towson had battled back to get within 2 points of the lead. Those two buckets gave Billbe, AU's leading scorer coming in, his sixth double figures game in eight starts.

That AU was in the game when it reached the second half would have been a surprise to anyone who watched the first five minutes. Towson jumped out to a quick 10-point lead by hitting 6 of the first 7 shots it took. Three of those were three-pointers, the lone miss was rebounded and put back. The Tigers were on a roll.

They might have stayed on a roll, too, if not for two things.

First, like A.U., Towson got next to nothing inside in the first half. The 4 points Towson scored in the paint all came on putbacks. Not once were they successful going inside off their halfcourt offense. After hitting 6 of its first eight shots, including 3-4 from the arc, Towson seemed to think the perimeter jump shot was the only weapon it needed to use.

The problem for the Tigers was the longer the half went, the less the jumpers wanted to fall. At the 8:39 mark, Towson was barely still over 50 percent (10-19). By the break Towson's field goal percentage had dropped to 39.3 (11-28).

Given AU's first half offense, that still might have been enough to stay on top, had someone bothered guard Carr a little. The Eagles missed 10 of the first 13 shots they put up and shot only a little better the rest of the half, finishing at 33 percent. The Eagle also turned it over 10 times. Take away Carr, and the rest of American's roster shot 24 percent (6-25) in the first half.

Still nobody got a hand in Carr's face.

"We were certainly trying to. They did an excellent job of finding seams in the zone and getting the ball to him," said Towson coach Pat Kennedy.

The win was AU's second straight, both at home, after starting the year with six straight losses, all on the road. The Eagles will shoot for No. 3 in a row when they host cross-city rivals Howard Monday night before taking an 11-day break for finals.

NOTES: AU held a commanding 41-28 advantage on the boards . . . It was the third time this season AU won the battle on the glass . . . AU's freshman point guard, Derrick Mercer finished with 6 assists and 4 turnovers. His assists to turnovers ratio is likely to improve once his teammates get used to catching some of the nifty passes the 5-9 waterbug dishes off . . . as tough as it is to spell the last name of AU guard Arvydas Eitulavicius, it sounded even more difficult to pronounce for the Towson radio crew seated next door on press row . . . The Towson radio crew could also bemoaning the fact that the Tigers could not send AU to the line in the final moments to try to stretch the game because they had made enough fouls to put AU in the one-and-one ... "If you have three fouls to give with less than a minute to go, you probably have not been playing very aggressive defense," said one of the announcers . . . The same might have been said for AU, which had only 5 second half personals . . . Combined with a first half in which Towson committed 3 personals and AU 4, not a single one-and-one was shot all afternoon . . . Given that both teams shot better than 50 percent from the floor in the second half, that radio guy might have been right about the lack of aggressive defense.

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