Men's Basketball | 1/19/2016 11:43:00 PM
Box Score ABILENE – As he made his way to center court to greet ACU head coach
Joe Golding at the end of the Wildcats' 75-67 win over McNeese State, all Cowboys' head coach Dave Simmons could do was smile and shake his head.
"Have fun coaching him the next three years," Simmons told Golding after an ACU win in Southland Conference men's basketball action at Moody Coliseum.
The "him" to which Simmons referred was ACU freshman guard
Jaylen Franklin, who turned Moody Coliseum into his personal playground Tuesday night, scoring a career-high 29 points with all of them coming either in the paint or at the free throw line.
He finished 11 for 15 from the field (8 for 9 in the second half) with all of the buckets coming on short jumpers or layups after ferocious drives to the basket. He went to the free throw line 11 times and made seven of them, grabbed six steals (all in the second half) and dished out four assists in 35 minutes of action.
Franklin scored 15 straight ACU points in a six-minute burst in the second half that helped the Wildcats keep control of a game in which they led for all but 30 seconds. For most of the second half, the Wildcat offense consisted of spreading the floor, clearing out and letting Franklin drive inside the lane. He hit floaters in the lane, layups and short jumpers in a dominating sequence that helped the Wildcats' lead never dip below three points as the Cowboys found their shooting range in the final 20 minutes.
It was, succinctly, one of the best performances by an ACU player in the last 20 years of Wildcat basketball.
"He has a chance to be very, very special," said Golding, who watched his team improve to 8-10 overall and 3-2 in the Southland. "I don't think he knows yet how good he is right now or how good he can become."
The rest of the league is starting to come around to it, however. In conference play, Franklin is now averaging 23.5 points per game and is shooting 50.7 percent from the floor (35 of 69) and 66.7 percent from the free throw line (24 of 36). In the Wildcats' last two games, he is a combined 20 of 35 from the floor (57.1 percent).
While praising Franklin for his play, Golding also credited the team's four seniors – guards
Jalen Little and
Parker Wentz, forward
Austin Cooke and center
Duran Porter – for showing their leadership in deferring to the younger Franklin.
"I've challenged
Jalen Little because he's the leader of our team," Golding said. "He's the guy who has the pulse of the locker room and of this team, and I've been on him and he's done a great job with J-Frank behind the scenes. He (Little) didn't play the last five minutes of the game, but he was J-Frank's biggest cheerleader because he knew he was in a zone. Our bench was fantastic all night, but especially late. No one was selfish, and everyone was excited for J-Frank because no one cares about anything other than winning."
Up until the midway point of the second half, Franklin had played a solid game, but he absolutely took the game over with ACU leading just 47-44 with a little more than 10 minutes to play. He scored on a jumper before Jamaya Burr of McNeese answered on the other end. Franklin then hit two free throws before Burr did the same.
Franklin then hit back-to-back jumpers before he got a steal on the defensive end and a layup on the other off a beautiful feed from Little to push ACU's lead to 57-48 with 8:32 to play. McNeese scored the first four points out of the timeout before Franklin hit the first of two free throws to push the lead back to six. Tevin Jackson then hit a jumper before Franklin answered with a driving layup and a jumper at the 4:58 mark to push the lead back to eight points.
ACU's lead would not fall below five points the rest of the way. Junior
Jovan Crnic was key late in the game as he hit four free throws and made a beautiful, no-look, behind-the-back pass to
Duran Porter for a dunk with 41 seconds left for ACU's final points. Wentz scored six points in the final 2:44 on a couple of layups and two free throws, and freshman
Jaren Lewis hit a key 3-pointer – off an assist from Franklin – to push ACU's lead to an insurmountable 10 points (67-57) with 3:01 to play.
Lewis had 12 points, five rebounds and one assist, while Porter finished with 10 points, five rebounds, one assist and one block. Went had nine points, while Crnic had seven points, two rebounds and four assists in 21 solid minutes. ACU shot 60 percent from the floor in the second half (15 of 25) to finish at 51.9 percent for the game (28 of 54), the second straight game the Wildcats have shot better than 50 percent from the floor.
Despite allowing the Cowboys to shoot 50 percent in the second half (15 of 30), the Wildcats played well defensively, holding the Cowboys to just 44.2 percent from the floor for the game (23 of 52) and 35.3 percent from 3-point range (6 of 17). ACU also forced 15 turnovers and collected seven steals.
"I thought we were really good defensively," Golding said. "We made them take some tough shots, and to their credit, they hit some of them. But I thought we got settled in and did some good work on the defensive end of the floor. This is the best defensive team we've had since I've been here, and our guys take pride in that. When this team wants it, it can be very good defensively."
The key to it all Tuesday night, though, was Franklin.
"He makes it really easy on a head coach when you know you can turn it over to one guy and let him take over a game," said Golding, whose team is back in action Saturday afternoon in San Antonio against Incarnate Word. "The key to it, though, was that, as a freshman, he had our entire bench screaming at us to feed him the ball. That doesn't happen very often, and it's a credit to this team and the fact that we're all bought in and winning – not who gets the credit for it – is the only thing that matters."
