ABILENE – Armed with a chance to move one game in front of Central Arkansas for seventh place in the Southland Conference with just three games to play in the regular season, the ACU Wildcats couldn't capitalize on home-court advantage Thursday night as their biggest nemesis in the Southland Conference marched into Moody Coliseum and walked out with a huge win of its own.
Joseph Kilgore scored 24 points to lead four Texas A&M-Corpus Christi players in double figures as the Islanders kept their post-season hopes alive with a 76-67 win over ACU, a defeat that drops the Wildcats to 7-8 in the Southland and into a seventh-place tie with UCA, which will be in Abilene Saturday to take on ACU at 4 p.m. at Moody Coliseum.
The Wildcats and Bears are just one game ahead of McNeese and A&M-Corpus Christi, which are both 6-9 in the league with three games to play. With six of the eight spots in the post-season tournament already having been claimed by Nicholls, Southeastern Louisiana, Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston State, New Orleans and Lamar, four teams – ACU, UCA, McNeese and Corpus – are playing for the final two spots in the tournament field.
ACU had a golden opportunity to inch closer to the post-season Thursday night, but couldn't handle the Islanders, who improved to 9-0 all-time against the Wildcats, including 5-0 in Abilene. Corpus Christi is the only team in the league that ACU has yet to defeat since re-joining the league in 2013-14.
The Islanders moved in front with a 10-0 run midway through the first half and never looked back, stretching the lead to as many as 14 points in the first half before settling for a 43-32 halftime advantage.
Corpus was able to keep its lead between six and 13 points throughout the second half before ACU made a run behind junior point guard
Jaylen Franklin, who attacked the rim relentlessly on the offensive end, finishing with a team-high 21 points on 9 of 11 shooting from the floor.
ACU trailed 67-62 after a Franklin layup with 3:41 to play and then trailed 68-64 after
Payten Ricks made the second of two free throws with 2:20 to play. But
Tevin Foster turned the ball over on ACU's next possession and Kilgore turned the steal into a breakaway dunk and a 70-64 lead with 1:51 to play.
After
Jaren Lewis hit a layup to bring ACU to within 70-66 with 1:34 left, Kilgore hit a cold-blooded jumper with 1:07 left – just beating the shot-clock buzzer – to put his team back in front by six points at 72-66. Franklin made 1 of 2 free throws with 58 seconds to play before Myles Smith missed the front end of a one-and-one for Corpus and Lewis grabbed the rebound for the Wildcats, giving them a chance to make it a one-possession game with about 45 seconds left.
But Ricks threw the ball away to Kilgore, who again turned the turnover into a breakaway dunk and a 74-67 lead with 27 seconds left. A Franklin turnover turned into another Kilgore steal and two free throws with 15 seconds to play to seal the win for the Islanders.
ACU is now 15-13 overall and 7-8 in the league and will host UCA in Saturday's regular-season home finale. The game will be part of the 50
th anniversary celebration of Moody Coliseum.
