By Tyler Mayforth
Daily Record Sports
San Marcos — Texas State issued a warning to the rest of the teams in the Southland Conference tournament last Saturday against Sam Houston State.
The Bobcats looked as if to say, “We’re ready,” following their 101-97 overtime win at Strahan Coliseum. With the victory, Texas State won its third consecutive game and is playing its best basketball at the right time of the season.
“We’re going in off a win, which we didn’t do last year,” Bobcats senior forward John Rybak said. “Last year, we lost to Sam Houston and it wasn’t even a good loss. We lost by double digits, but there’s a whole different swagger about our team right now.”
Texas State just doesn’t have an entirely new sense of confidence about itself. The Bobcats are a polar opposite of their 2008-09 version at this point of the season.
Last season, Texas State relied on two players for production (Brandon Bush and Brent Benson) and if they didn’t step up, the team was doomed. While the same could be said for the current team earlier this season (with Cameron Johnson), the Bobcats have found ways to win when Johnson didn’t put up his usual numbers — or didn’t play at all — as was the case against Northwestern State two weeks ago.
Johnson was suspended by the SLC for physical contact with an opposing player in Texas State’s only loss in its last four games (Stephen F. Austin). In a must-win game, the Bobcats got 42 points from J.B. Conley and cruised to a 14-point victory.
“That was the real true test for our team and we really came together,” Texas State head coach Doug Davalos said. “We talked about what toughness is, in terms of basketball, and from that point on, our guys have played well together. We’ve won and have been winning as a team.”
It hasn’t just been Conley and Johnson asserting themselves.
The Bobcats have received strong performances from Rybak, Ryan White, Emmanuel Bidias a Moute and Uriel Segura during their three-game win streak.
Rybak finally came through during SLC play with his 25-point performance last Saturday. Moute, who’d been sporadic at times, scored 16 points and grabbed six rebounds and White scored eight of his 19 points in overtime. Segura chipped in his second consecutive double-digit outing with 10 points.
While multiple sources of production is one thing, having tournament experience is another — and Texas State has it. The Bobcats returned five players from last season’s squad that lost in the first round of the conference tournament.
So not only is Texas State ready, but it’s ravenous.
“All of the guys who participated last time in the tournament are hungrier,” Johnson said. “We let it slip through our fingers and it’s not going to happen again.”
