ABILENE – Wednesday night's game against Houston Baptist certainly wasn't pretty and no one wearing purple and white or cheering for the Wildcats felt comfortable until the final buzzer sounded. But at the end of the day, conference basketball in the grind of January is about surviving and moving on to the next one.
And that's exactly what ACU did Wednesday night as the Wildcats captured their third straight win with a 75-68 decision over the Huskies. The three-game Southland Conference winning streak is the first for the Wildcats since they started the 2014-15 conference season 3-0. ACU is now 15-3 overall and 4-1 in the league and still one-half game behind league-leading Sam Houston State, which beat Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 72-50, Wednesday night to improve to 4-0 in league play.
Nothing about Wednesday night's win was easy, even though the Huskies entered the game at 5-9 overall and 1-2 in the league. But this is an HBU team that earlier this season went on the road and beat Wake Forest of the ACC, knocked off Fordham at home, lost by seven at Miami, beat Lamar in overtime to open league play and then lost at New Orleans in overtime and by one point last Saturday at Nicholls.
And the Huskies entered the game averaging 82.2 points per game, which was 31st in the country before the game started.
But as they've done in each of their last three conference wins — which have come by a combined 11 points — the Wildcats found a way.
ACU never got into an offensive rhythm Wednesday night, despite hitting 48 percent of its shots from the field (28 of 58), including 54 percent in the second half (13 of 24). But most of that offense came in fits and starts and the biggest lead the Wildcats enjoyed the entire night was eight points on two occasions, the last time 54-46 with 11:06 left in the game.
The nitty gritty of this game was in the final 3:37 after HBU had taken a 63-61 lead on an Edward Hardt jumper with 4:38 to play in the game. On ACU's next trip down the floor,
Jalone Friday — playing in his first game since Jan. 2 after serving a three-game suspension for a violation of team rules — missed a 3-pointer, but ACU got the offensive rebound.
Payten Ricks then missed another 3-pointer, but
Jaren Lewis was in the right spot and tipped the rebound in to knot the game at 63 apiece with 3:37 to play.
After a turnover by HBU's Ty Dalton, ACU came back down the floor and Lewis made a pair of free throws to give the Wildcats a 65-63 lead with 3:21 to play. Ian Dubose made one free throw on HBU's next trip down the floor before ACU senior point guard
Jaylen Franklin answered with a short floating jumper in the lane to push the lead to 67-64 with 2:02 to play.
ACU hasn't lost a game all season when it has led with two minutes to play, and that trend continued Wednesday night.
After the Franklin bucket, Friday grabbed a defensive rebound on the other end and got the outlet pass ahead to Lewis, who found
B.J. Maxwell for a huge corner 3-pointer and a 70-64 lead with 1:33 to play. HBU called timeout and it worked because the Huskies answered with back-to-back buckets to cut the lead to 70-68 with 37 seconds to play.
HBU then fouled Franklin and the career 55 percent free throw shooter came up clutch, hitting the front end to give ACU a 71-68 lead with 27 seconds left. HBU went for the quick tying 3-pointer, but Lewis grabbed the miss from Jackson Stand and was fouled by Hardt, who was assessed a flagrant foul with 21 seconds left.
Lewis made two free throws, and after Friday was fouled on the inbounds pass he buried two free throws to give ACU a 75-68 lead with 19 seconds to play. That ended it as Hardt missed two free throws with seven seconds left and, after Lewis grabbed the defensive rebound, the clock ran out on the Huskies.]
Friday finished with a game-high 21 points on 8 of 16 shooting, while Lewis finished with 13 points and Maxwell added 10.
NOTES
• Wednesday night's victory gives ACU 15 wins on the season, one off of last year's season total when ACU went 16-15 in the regular season, finishing the season 16-16 after a first-round CIT loss at Drake. Only 27 other teams in ACU's 98 years of men's basketball have won at least 15 games in a season.
• With his 21-point effort, Friday is just 11 points away from 1,000 career points. When he gets those 11, he will join seniors
Jaren Lewis (1,347 career points) and
Jaylen Franklin (1,251 career points) as active 1,000-point career scorers for the Wildcats.
• Lewis is ACU's NCAA Division I career scoring leader, followed by Franklin,
Parker Wentz (1,062 points in his final three seasons after playing his first season at the NCAA Division II level) and then Friday.
• Franklin finished the game with seven assists and four steals to give him 424 career assists and 190 career steals. He is ACU's NCAA Division I leader in both of those categories.
QUOTABLE
"This was a typical Southland Conference game. This is what each of the first five conference games have been like, and I expect the rest of them will be like this as well. We're getting comfortable playing games that go down the stretch, and that was evident tonight. Things didn't go our way for a lot of the night, but we made more plays than them at the end of the game."
— ACU head coach Joe Golding
UP NEXT
ACU will host Northwestern State at 6 p.m. Saturday at Moody Coliseum. The Wildcats have won four straight against the Demons, who are 7-10 overall and 2-2 after finishing 4-25 overall and 1-17 in the league last season.
