ABILENE, Texas – Too many second-half turnovers, too little rebounding and way too much Thomas Walkup spelled doom for the ACU Wildcats on Saturday, although they put up a spirited battle against Stephen F. Austin in an 82-64 loss to the Lumberjacks in front of a large and loud Moody Coliseum crowd and a CBS Sports Network national television audience.
The 18-point win for the Lumberjacks pushes their Southland Conference winning streak to 26 straight and their overall winning streak this season to 13 straight as they improve to 14-3 overall and 4-0 in the Southland Conference. The loss snaps ACU's five-game home winning streak as the Wildcats fall to 9-8 and 3-1 in the league. The Wildcats are back in action Tuesday at 7 p.m. when they take on McNeese State in Lake Charles, La.
The first half was a taught, back-and-forth contest with neither team able to break away until SFA put together a run to take a 29-21 lead with 5:26 left in the first half. But ACU reserves
K.J. Maura and
Drake Green sparked the Wildcats in the final couple of minutes, helping them take a lead into halftime.
Green had back-to-back buckets, the first a layup as he knifed through traffic to tie the game at 29-29 with 2:15 left, and then a 3-pointer with 1:30 to play in the half to give ACU a 32-29 lead. After back-to-back buckets by Jacob Parker and Walkup gave SFA a 33-32 lead,
Parker Wentz hit a layup to give the Wildcats a 34-33 lead with 21 seconds left in the half.
SFA then committed one of its nine first-half turnovers with six seconds to play, giving the Wildcats one last chance at a bucket. ACU got the ball across the half court line, but the ball slipped away from
LaDarrien Williams into the hands of Maura. The freshman from Puerto Rico then fired up an off-balance 3-pointer that hit nothing but the bottom of the net at the buzzer, setting off the 2,874 fans at Moody Coliseum and sending the Wildcats into halftime with a 37-33 lead.
At the half, the Wildcats had the game going exactly they wanted. They had already scored 37 points against a team allowing just 61 points per game, they had scored as many points in the paints as SFA (18), and they had only been out-rebounded by the taller, more physical Lumberjacks by one rebound (16-15).
But that all changed in the game's final 20 minutes, although Wentz hit the first bucket of the a second half – a 3-pointer to give ACU a 40-33 lead, it's biggest of the day.
However, over the next 7:41 of game time, the Lumberjacks outscored the Wildcats 29-10 to turn a 40-33 deficit into a 62-50 lead. Walkup led the way with seven points in the run, while Jared Johnson had six for the Lumberjacks.
It was during that point in the game where the Wildcats seemed to lose a little bit of their composure and took a few ill-advised shots that helped SFA begin to pull away.
"SFA executed much better in the second half, and we didn't do a good job of guarding them," ACU head coach
Joe Golding said. "We didn't a very good job on them inside in the second half, and then we lost our composure and took quick shots in the second half, and neither of those helped us."
SFA outscored ACU in the paint 28-6 in the second half as Walkup, Parker and Clide Geffrard dominated the paint for the Lumberjacks. The 'Jacks also out-rebounded the Wildcats 23-10 in the final 20 minutes to help them pull away from ACU. After building the lead to 12 points, SFA never led by less than 10 points the rest of the way.
"We talked a lot at halftime about keeping them off the glass and not letting them score inside," Golding said. "But we obviously didn't do a good enough job in either area in the second half."
SFA also put the clamps on ACU's leading scorers:
Parker Wentz,
Harrison Hawkins and
LaDarrien Williams. Wentz – who had 31 points Tuesday night in ACU's 95-81 win at Northwestern State – hit just 2 of 10 shots from the field to finish with seven points, while Hawkins and Williams each finished with nine points.
Austin Cooke led the Wildcats with 10 points and four rebounds.
Despite the loss, Golding said his team's effort is good enough to build on as this team continues to try and get into the upper half of the Southland Conference in its second year at the NCAA Division I level.
"We had a great crowd in here (Saturday) and the national TV lights, and I thought our guys fed off of all of that," he said. "I'm still very excited about our 3-1 start to conference play, and we'll all be ready to get back on the floor Tuesday night in Lake Charles and try to get this game out of our system."
