ABILENE - Despite being eliminated from postseason contention last Saturday night, the Abilene Christian's men's basketball team returns to the court this week in search of two wins that would net the program its first .500 season since 2007-08.
The Wildcats (11-13, 5-11 LSC) will first play at Incarnate Word (13-11, 9-7 LSC) Wednesday night before coming home to face Texas A&M-Kingsville (11-12, 7-9 LSC) in the season finale. Each of this week's games will tip at 7:30 p.m. and be carried locally on AM-1280 KSLI. There will also be a live audio stream for Wednesday's contest at UIW and full video stream of Saturday's home game vs. the Javelinas. Live stream information can be found on the ACU Sports page at
SkyboxLive.com.
Also on Saturday night, the Wildcats' senior class will be honored during pregame introductions, while the ACU Men's
Lone Star Conference-Era Starting 5 Team will be introduced at halftime.
ACU recorded its biggest win of the season the first time it played UIW back on January 15. The Wildcats won the game vs. the then-second place Cardinals, 93-76, as the starting five of
Eric Lawton,
Elliott Lloyd,
Dosh Simms,
Steven Werner and
Cornelius Cammock each scored in double figures in combining for 86 points.
Lloyd was 5-of-9 from the field that night and 4-of-8 from 3-point range to lead all players with 24 points, while Lawton, hit 7-of-13 shots to finish with 18 points and nine assists.
Simms, meanwhile, recorded 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting. Werner added 16 in the paint and Cammock contributed 11.
Unfortunately, the Wildcats could not maintain their momentum four days later in Kingsville, where they dropped a 74-65 decision to the Javelinas. ACU trailed by 20 points at the break, but trimmed that deficit all the way to three points following a layup by Lawton inside the six-minute mark. Kingsville, however, responded with a quick time out and then went on a game-changing 11-3 run over the next four minutes that included a 3-pointer from Reid Wallace and layup by Adam Mughmaw with a minute remaining.
Kingsville had only one player - Rashad Basey (24) - reach double figures that night, while the Wildcats had four: Lawton (17), Werner (17), Simms (12) and Lloyd (11). But at the same time, Kingsville (.532) collectively shot 20 percent better from the floor than ACU (.328) as the Wildcats finished the game 2-for-8 over the final five minutes.
In spite of its recent spate of losses, ACU still ranks among the conference's top-three teams in several categories, including scoring offense (3rd, 70.9 ppg), field goal (2nd, .458) and 3-point field goal percentage (1st, .404), rebounding margin (3rd, +6.2) and 3-point field goals made (3rd, 7.0).
Individually, Lawton is second in scoring with 16.9 points per game and enters this week 26 points behind leader Dionelle Rucker of Incarnate Word, who is averaging 18.0 points per game for the LSC's No. 1 scoring offense (74.5). Lawton has scored 405 points this season, making him the first Wildcat to pass the 400-point threshold since Dejan Sencanski in 2008-09.
Lawton also leads the conference with 2.6 3-pointers per game, is fourth in 3-point field goal percentage (.459) and minutes played (35.2), and third in assists (4.5).
Simms is currently tied for second in the LSC in rebounding with Midwestern State's Corbin Thomas with 8.6 per game. Simms pulled down 161 boards through 28 games last season (5.8), but already has 172 this season in eight fewer games.
Werner is second on the team and seventh in the league with 6.5 rebounds per game.
