Men's Basketball | 2/23/2016 11:05:00 PM
Box Score CORPUS CHRISTI – When a young team hits the road to take on a championship-calibre team, almost everything has to go right for the underdog to even stay in the game against the favorite.
For 33 minutes Tuesday night at the American Bank Center, the ACU Wildcats did just about everything right against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which entered the game in second place in the Southland Conference. The Wildcats took good shots, weren't hurt too much by turnovers and were even with the Islanders on the glass.
But, like all good teams do in situations like Tuesday night, the experienced team finds a way to win, which is exactly what the Islanders did in a 65-59 win over the spirited Wildcats in front of 1,428 fans in a Southland Conference contest on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The loss drops the Wildcats to 12-16 overall and 7-8 in the Southland, while the Islanders improve to 21-6 and 12-3. The game was the Wildcats' final road contest of the season, and they'll have a chance to finish above .500 in league play with their final three games at Moody Coliseum where they are 5-0 in league play and 9-2 overall on the season.
One of those games will be against Corpus Christi, which will visit Abilene on Saturday, March 5, in what the Islanders will know could be a much tougher contest than they counted on entering the season.
The Wildcats led for much of the first half, thanks to hot shooting from the field: 50 percent overall (11 of 22), including 54.5 percent from 3-point range (6 of 11). The second half opened with a 3-pointer from
Austin Cooke to give ACU a 36-26 lead, and that lead grew to 42-31 after a pair of free throws from Cooke with 15:42 to play in the game.
That, however, is when the Islanders began to assert themselves. The team that leads the nation in steals and is in the top 10 in turnover margin began to turn the Wildcats over and then turn those into points on the offensive end.
After the timeout, the Islanders ran off a 16-4 run over the next four minutes to take a 47-46 lead. In that span, the Wildcats turned the ball over four times, leading to seven Corpus Christi points. The Wildcats, however, wouldn't fade as
Jovan Crnic and Cooke hit back-to-back 3-pointers to give ACU a 52-51 lead with 8:50 to play.
But the Islanders outscored ACU 14-7 over the final 6:49 of the contest to pull away for the win. The Islanders dominated the glass in the late stages of the second, especially on the offensive end where they grabbed at least three offensive rebounds to continue possessions after the Wildcats had gotten needed defensive stops.
"I was really proud of the way we competed against a really good team," ACU head coach
Joe Golding said. "We turned the ball over too much (17 turnovers), especially in the second half (nine), and you can't do that against a team like Corpus Christi. We got stops, but we gave up too many offensive rebounds late in the game and that was the difference. But the more our guys – especially our young guys – are in situations like this, the better they are going to become."
Jaylen Franklin and Cooke led the Wildcats with 15 points apiece, while senior guard
Parker Wentz – who played in his 116
th career game Tuesday, breaking the record he shared with Rodney Fedell and Randall Moore (115 games from 1976-80) – had nine points on three first-half 3-pointers.
ACU is back in action Saturday at 4 p.m. when it hosts New Orleans at Moody Coliseum.
