Unbeaten Wildcats return home to host Howard Payne

Howard Payne at ACU

When: Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018
Time: 6 p.m.
Where: Moody Coliseum (Abilene, Texas)
Records: Abilene Christian 6-0; Howard Payne 0-5
Series: ACU leads 74-38
Last Game: ACU 112, Howard Payne 62 (Nov. 16, 2017; Abilene, Texas)
Streak: ACU has won 8 straight dating back to the 1994-95 season
Last ACU win: ACU 112, Howard Payne 62 (Nov. 16, 2017; Abilene, Texas)
Last HPU win: Howard Payne 60, ACU 50 (Dec. 3, 1990; Brownwood, Texas)
Radio: 98.1 FM (98theticket.com)
Watch: acusports.com
Live Stats: StatBroadcast

Tuesday Night's Game
The Wildcats are squeezing in a non-Division I game Tuesday night against old rival Howard Payne between trips to California. The Wildcats and Yellow Jackets will tip off at 6 p.m. at Moody Coliseum in a game that can be heard on 98.1 FM The Ticket.
 
Howard Payne is the team ACU has played most often in its history as Tuesday night's game will be the 113^th meeting between the teams. ACU is 74-38 all-time against Howard Payne in a series that dates back to the 1921-22, ACU's third season of intercollegiate basketball.
 
Scouting the Wildcats
• For the first time in program history, ACU received votes (21) in Monday's collegeinsider.com Mid-Major poll. Gonzaga – the nation's top-ranked team – is the No. 1 team in the Mid-Major poll with Buffalo (5-0), Belmont (5-0), Furman (7-0) and UNC-Greensboro (6-1) rounding out the top five. Lipscomb – which beat ACU twice last season and then beat SMU and TCU last week in Texas – is ranked eighth in the poll. The only other Southland Conference school to receive votes in the Mid-Major poll this week was Stephen F. Austin (4-1), which received 25 votes.
 
• The NCAA released its first NET rankings on Monday and Ohio State was the top-ranked team in the nation according to those rankings. The NET rankings have taken the place of the old RPI system to help select teams for at-large bids and seed teams for the NCAA Tournament in March. ACU was ranked 55^th in the country in Monday's initial ranking.
 
• Jaren Lewis – who was the tournament MVP last weekend at the Tigers Thanksgiving Classic hosted by the University of the Pacific – was voted the Southland Conference Player of the Week on Monday for the second time in the first three weeks of the season. Lewis averaged 15.3 points and 7.0 rebounds per game to help ACU beat Elon (N.C.), Pacific and UC-Riverside to win the tournament title.
 
• Since ACU re-joined the Southland Conference in 2013-14 and its players became eligible for conference weekly and postseason honors in 2014-15, Lewis is the only Wildcat player to earn men's basketball Player of the Week honors, and he's now been honored three times. He won it the first time Feb. 12, 2018, and then won it again two weeks ago (Nov. 12).
 
• Junior center Jalone Friday was named to the all-tournament team at Pacific after averaging 15.0 points and 6.7 rebounds per contest in the three wins. Friday had a game-high 22 points in the win over Pacific and recorded his seventh career double-double in the win over UC-Riverside, finishing the game with 10 points and 10 rebounds.
 
• Senior point guard Jaylen Franklin – who buried a buzzer-beating, game-winning jumper in the 73-71 win over Pacific last Friday night – is playing the best basketball of his Wildcat career. Franklin is averaging 8.5 points per game, but has dished out 29 assists (4.8 per game) and committed just five turnovers (0.9 per game), giving him an assist-to-turnover ratio of 5.8, which leads the Southland and is ninth-best in Division I basketball. Franklin is also second in the league in assists per game and eighth in steals per game (1.67).
 
• The Wildcats are 6-0 on the season and off to the program's best start at the NCAA Division I level (since the 2013-14 season) and off to the program's best start overall since the 1998-99 team started 11-0 on its way to a 20-win season and a spot in the NCAA Division II national tournament.
 
• The Wildcats swept their three games at last weekend's Tigers Thanksgiving Classic (hosted by the University of the Pacific) with wins over Elon (72-56), a thriller over the hosts from Pacific (73-71 on a buzzer-beating jumper by Jaylen Franklin) and UC-Riverside (60-48 in the Wildcats' first win over the Highlanders after three losses).
 
• The Wildcats limited UC-Riverside to just 48 points in the win over the Highlanders, the first time in almost 70 years the Wildcats have limited an NCAA Division I opponent to less than 50 points in a game. The last time ACU limited a Division I opponent to less than 50 points in a game came in a 43-40 loss to North Texas in December 1950.
 
• In six games this season, the Wildcats' largest deficit is six points against Pacific last Friday (Nov. 23). ACU has trailed by three against both Denver (Nov. 15) and UC-Riverside (Nov. 24), two points against Arlington Baptist (Nov. 6) and one point against Elon (Nov. 22). ACU never trailed in its Nov. 9 win over Arkansas State.
 
• In their six games so far this season (240 minutes of game time), ACU has led for 207 minutes, six seconds (207:06) of game time and has only trailed or been tied for 32:54.
 
• Since the Wildcats moved to NCAA Division I affiliation prior to the start of the 2013-14 season, the Wildcats are 15-33 in non-conference Division I contests, including 6-26 in true road contests (12-28 when including a 6-2 record in neutral-site games). The Wildcats, however, are 9-6 in their last 15 non-conference Division I games dating back to the start of the 2017-18 season (5-0 this season), including 6-4 on the road.  
 
• Since moving to the NCAA Division I level, the Wildcats are 3-3 in the state of California with losses at California-Riverside (December 2014), Sacramento State (December 2016) and San Francisco (December 2016) and wins last weekend over Elon (N.C.), Pacific and UC-Riverside at the Tigers Thanksgiving Classic in Stockton, California.
 
• In their 97-plus years of collegiate basketball, the Wildcats have only played 16 games against teams from the state of California and are 8-8 in those games with wins over Cal State-Northridge, Pepperdine, Sacramento State, Cal State-Chico, Cal State-East Bay, Biola, Pacific and UC-Riverside.
 
• Lewis has recorded 15 double-doubles in his career, including one this season, an 18-point, 15-rebound tour de force against Arkansas State as part of a 94-73 ACU win on Nov. 9. The Wildcats are 7-8 in games in which Lewis records a double-double.
 
• The Wildcats' win at Denver was the 90th in head coach Joe Golding's eighth season as the ACU head coach. ACU is 22-16 in its last 38 games.