TXST MEN’S BASKETBALL
In a thrilling back and forth contest, Texas State maintained their perfect home record with a hard fought win over the Southern Jaguars 86-83.
The Bobcats improve to 7-5 overall while Southern falls to 4-6.
“You’re talking about a team that’s undefeated at home and continues to figure out some kind of way to be one point better than their opponents here,” Head Coach Terrence Johnson said.
”Looking at the landscape of college basketball, working the numbers, and understanding that that could be a difference maker in success for this program. So we still have a ways to go. We are still working through some stuff, but I would tell you I’m proud of the Bobcats tonight. Had a lot of reasons to not fight and didn’t allow any of them to be an excuse.”
After Southern took the lead at 69-67 with less than five minutes left in the second half, senior Kyndall Davis knocked down a three-pointer to put the Bobcats back in front 70-69.
With less than four minutes remaining in the game, Southern’s Malek Abdelgowad and Davis fought for the jump ball after the whistle was blown. During the scuffle, Abdelgowad elbowed junior Kaden Gumbs in the face, leading to a technical foul and the ejection of Abdelgowad from the game.
With emotions at an all-time high in the arena, Johnson was proud of his team for being composed.
“I congratulated them for keeping their head,” Johnson said. “I just told them that, that’s something that we expected, and now we just need to focus on, knock down these two free throws and get back to business.”
The level of physicality was expected from Johnson given the league play of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
“We understood with this team that [Southern] won the SWAC [last year] and the SWAC is an extremely physical league,” Johnson said. ”We’ve watched them out-physical a lot of teams, including highend major teams. We had to meet the challenge and I’m proud of our guys for the most part, keeping their head.”
Despite taking an elbow to the face, Gumbs knew the team was in a position to win, knowing how close they were.
“We just rallied around each other,” Gumbs said. ”Obviously, y’all saw it got very ugly out there, but as long as we stayed together, I thought we were good and we won.”
Senior Mark Drone added on, knowing the final four minutes was going to be about which team was going to remain focused on the task at hand.
“We knew that it was about us being composed,” Drone said. “They weren’t as composed as us, so we knew we were going to be able to pull it through with us being more focused on them.”
Texas State pushed their lead up to eight points but a late 9-2 run by Southern trimmed the Bobcats lead down to 8180 with less than 30 seconds to go in the game.
But Davis was able to come through in the clutch, hitting a threepointer with 18-seconds left in the game to deliver the dagger and seal the win for the Bobcats at 86-83.
“It’s a big thing,” Johnson said. [Davis] in his last year, his final season. To have the kind of moments like this, and he’s been in the gym working really hard, we’re excited about that. He made some big time plays, obviously, with that last shot, but he also made some big time plays throughout the course of the game. He gave us all he had tonight, and he deserves a moment like that.”
Drone led the team in scoring with 23 points followed by Gumbs with 15 and Davis with 14. Davis also led the team in rebounds with eight. Seniors Makai Willis and Jalen Bolden scored in double digits with 12 and 11 points each.
Texas State opens up conference play on Wednesday against Arkansas State. The Red Wolves enter the game with a 7-3 overall record having won four straight games including a 90-78 win over rival Little Rock.
Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Strahan Arena.
