ABILENE – Before Tuesday night's home game against Charleston Southern, ACU head coach
Joe Golding asked his team to do a few basic things that he believed would lead to a win.
• Protect the basketball.
Check. ACU had just 12 turnovers and forced CSU into 14.
• Dominate the game in the paint.
Check. ACU outscored the Buccaneers 46-28 inside.
• Get to the free throw line.
Check. ACU went to the line 18 times, two more times than the Buccaneers.
But down the stretch, the Wildcats had a crucial turnover on a 10-second violation, allowed way too many offensive rebounds inside and missed half of their 18 free throws. And in the process, they lost a 17-point second-half lead in a tough-to-swallow 66-65 loss to the Buccaneers in Moody Coliseum.
The loss drops the Wildcats to 2-1, while the Buccaneers improve to 2-2. The teams will see each other again this season when ACU goes to Charleston, S.C., on Saturday, Dec. 3, in a rare non-conference return game.
Tuesday's loss will be tough for the Wildcats to back away from, if for no other reason than the fact that they did a lot of good things in building that 17-point lead through the game's first 27 minutes. But it was their inability to make key plays down the stretch that was their undoing.
ACU led 52-35 with 12:33 to play after a layup by
Hayden Farquhar, but would score just 13 points the rest of the night. Charleston Southern, meanwhile, got right back in the ballgame by going on a 17-2 run over the next four minutes to close to within 54-52 with 8:31 to play.
The Wildcats pushed the lead back to six points (58-52) on back-to-back jumpers by sophomore forward
Jaren Lewis, and had a five-point lead (62-57) when redshirt freshman center
Jalone Friday hit paydirt on a 3-pointer at the shot-clock buzzer with 2:51 to play.
ACU's lead was 64-60 with 1:44 to play after Lewis hit a layup on a feed from sophomore guard
Jaylen Franklin, and it looked like the Wildcats might hang on for the win when Cortez Mitchell missed a rebound and Friday corralled the rebound with 1:09 to play. But Franklin was whistled for a 10-second violation when he didn't cross the timeline in the allotted 10 seconds, giving the ball back to the Buccaneers.
Javis Howard made the first of two free throws to make it a 64-61 game, but Lewis was fouled on the other end and went to the line for a one-and-one opportunity. He made the first but missed the second and the Buccaneers came away with the rebound. Arnel Potter, who was clutch in the second half with 20 of his game-high 26 points in the final 20 minutes, buried a 3-pointer to cut ACU's lead to 65-64 with 30 seconds to play.
Charleston Southern fouled Franklin on ACU's ensuing possession and he missed the front end of the one-and-one and, after a battle for the loose ball, CSU came up with the possession. Potter made ACU pay when his jumper from the free throw line found the bottom of the net with four seconds to play, giving the Buccaneers their only lead of the night, 66-65.
Franklin had a running, off-balance 3-pointer at the buzzer go off the front rim, sending the Wildcats to their first defeat of the season.
Turning Point
ACU led 34-22 at halftime and stretched that lead to 52-35 in the first 7:27 of the second half, thanks to balanced scoring and strong interior play. Franklin had eight points, Lewis four and Friday, Farquhar and
Hayden Howell two points apiece in the 18-13 burst to start the second half for the Wildcats. Fourteen of those 18 points came in the paint where the Wildcats dominated all night.
However, Friday picked up his fourth foul of the game with 12:43 to play and he exited, and that sent CSU off on its 17-2 run to get right back in the game. The run was led by guard Christian Keeling and Porter who had eight and seven points, respectively, in the run that got the Buccaneers right back into the contest.
Key Stats
• The Wildcats started the game 1 for 4 at the free throw line before hitting six straight. They finished 2 for their last 8 to finish 9 for 18 at the line. ACU is now shooting 56.5 percent (35 for 62) at the free throw line through three games.
• Charleston Southern led the game for exactly four seconds … the final four seconds of the game.
• The Wildcats struggled from beyond the arc, hitting just 2 of 13 3-pointers (15.4 percent) and have hit just 32 percent from 3-point range this season (16 of 50).
Notable
• Redshirt freshman center
Jalone Friday had a career-high 12 points and, for the third straight game, had seven rebounds.
Quotable
"We've got a young team and we didn't play very well or coach very well down the stretch. We let a 17-point lead get away from us by not continuing to do the things that got us the lead. We're preaching defense and we did a good job to hold them to 22 points in the first half, but then we gave up 22 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. We played the game like we wanted to. We had more assists than turnovers, we dominated the inside on the offensive end and we got to the free throw line. But we gave up way too many offensive rebounds (13) and didn't hit free throws. And we didn't do a good job getting stops at the end of the game. I'll go back and look at a lot of things, and it starts with me. I didn't do a good job the last 10 minutes using timeouts to stop runs and things like that. But give Charleston Southern a lot of credit. They kept battling even down 17, and that's hard to do on the road." –
ACU head coach Joe Golding
Up Next
The Wildcats will be back in action Friday (Nov. 25) when they go to Norman, Okla., to take on the Oklahoma Sooners at 2 p.m. in the Lloyd Noble Center. The Sooners are 3-1 on the season after winning 29 games and reaching the Final Four in 2015-16. The game will be broadcast locally on 98.1 FM (98theticket.com on the internet)
