ABILENE – Nicholls withstood a furious late second-half push by the ACU Wildcats to walk out of Moody Coliseum with a 69-65 win Wednesday night in Southland Conference men's basketball action.
The Colonels put together a 15-2 run midway through the second half to turn a 48-47 lead with 12:39 to play into a 63-49 bulge with 9:15 to play in the game. Lafayette Rutledge — who had 12 points off the bench — had two 3-pointers in the run, and Kevin Johnson added a 3-pointer. Kimani Jackson had four points and Tevon Saddler had two in the run that gave the Colonels the separation they thought they would need.
But the Wildcats came charging back, outscoring the Colonels 12-0 in a little less than four minutes to cut the Nicholls lead to 63-61 with 4:57 to play.
Jaylen Franklin — who was terrific with 17 points, most of which came on relentless drives to the basket – had four points in the run, while
Hayden Howell,
Jaren Lewis,
Drake Green and
Tevin Foster each had two points.
After a Nicholls timeout, Roddy Peters – the Southland Conference's leading scorer and a top candidate for league Player of the Year honors – scored on a layup and then a jumper to push the Nicholls lead back to 67-61 with 3:19 to play. The Wildcats hurt themselves at the free throw line in the final 3:45 as both Franklin and
Jalone Friday missed the front end of 1-and-1 situations with ACU trailing by four points.
Foster hit a pair of free throws for ACU withy 1:34 to play to cut the Nicholls lead to 67-63 and then had a chance to draw closer when Rutledge missed a 3-pointer with a little more than one minute to play. But Rutledge grabbed the loose ball offensive rebound and was fouled by Friday. Rutledge made the second of two free throws to make it a 68-63 game with 50 seconds to play.
Lewis – who dominated the glass with 20 rebounds to set an ACU NCAA Division I-era single-game record – had layup with 42 seconds left to cut the Nicholls lead to 68-65. Peters was then fouled by Green with 25 seconds left, but missed the front end of the one and one and Howell grabbed the rebound to give ACU a chance at a game-tying 3-pointer.
After getting the ball with time running down, Franklin drove into the lane looking for an old-fashioned three-point play. But his layup was off the mark and Peters grabbed the rebound. He made the first of two free throws to make it a 69-65 game and ice the game.
The loss drops the Wildcats to 14-11 overall and 6-6 in the league as they fall from sixth place into eighth place in the Southland with six games to play in the regular season. Nicholls, meanwhile, improves to 15-9 and 9-2. ACU will be back in action Saturday at 4 p.m. when it hosts Incarnate Word at Moody Coliseum.
