ABILENE – The ACU Wildcats shook off a sluggish start Tuesday night to knock off Howard Payne 70-56 in a non-conference men's basketball game at Moody Coliseum.
The Wildcats are now 2-0 on the season, while the Yellow Jackets fall to 0-2 with the loss. ACU will hit the road for four straight games as part of the Corpus Christi Coastal Classic beginning with Sunday night's game against Portland in Portland, Ore., and followed by next Tuesday night's game against Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colo.
ACU trailed Tuesday night's game against Howard Payne 33-29 at halftime and trailed by as seven points (38-31) in the second half as the sluggish Wildcats couldn't find their shooting touch (12 of 30, 40 percent in the first half). The Yellow Jackets pushed their lead to seven points on a 3-pointer by Khyce Randall with 17:36 left in the game before the Wildcats finally got moving.
Senior center
Duran Porter scored nine of his 13 points in a 22-2 run that pushed the Wildcats into the lead. ACU outscored Howard Payne by 20 points over a stretch of a little more than seven minutes to get the game under control.
Senior guard
Parker Wentz started the run with back-to-back fast-break 3-pointers before a Porter dunk on a feed from
Jovan Crnic gave ACU a 39-38 lead with 14:34 left in the game.
Austin Cooke then drilled a jumper and Porter made 1 of 2 free throws to make it 42-38 before the Jackets scored to cut the lead to 42-40. But the Wildcats scored the next 11 points to effectively put the game away.
Freshman guard
Jaylen Franklin scored on inbounds alley-oop dunk from
Jalen Little before Crnic converted a three-point play to make it 47-40 with 11:48 to play. Porter then hit back-to-back layups and then hit two free throws to give ACU a 53-40 lead with 10:12 left in the contest.
ACU's lead would not fall below 10 the rest of the way as the Wildcats improve to 2-0 on the season for the first time since the 2011-12 team started 3-0.
Franklin led the Wildcats with 15 points and three steals in 26 minutes, while Porter had 13 points, six rebounds and two blocks in 17 minutes. Wentz finished with nine points in 27 minutes off the bench, while freshman forward
Jaren Lewis had nine points, eight rebounds, one block and one steal in 24 minutes off the bench.
