ABILENE, Texas – For lesser teams, what happened in the final 26 seconds of last Wednesday night's 61-60 loss at Stephen F. Austin might well have been more than they could handle. Turns out the ACU Wildcats' late-game collapse in a one-point heartbreaker made them tighten up some things that had gotten a little bit loose the last couple of weeks and made their focus a little sharper.
Unfortunately for Central Arkansas, the Bears paid the price for the Wildcats sitting around and stewing on the loss as ACU ran away from the Bears, 79-56, Saturday afternoon in front of a good crowd at Moody Coliseum.
In the 60-plus hours between the end of Wednesday night's game at SFA and the beginning of Saturday afternoon's tipoff vs. Central Arkansas, the Wildcats watched a painful tape Thursday afternoon and then had one of their best practices of the season Friday afternoon in preparation for the Bears. What the Wildcats saw on the tape was a team that had a 60-53 lead with 26 seconds lose when it missed two front-ends of one-and-one free-throw opportunities and turn the ball over twice on inbounds plays. And then watched Shannon Bogues once again bury a game-winning 3-pointer with 3.6 seconds to play.
"That was a hard film to watch; probably the hardest one I've ever watched," ACU head coach
Joe Golding said. "But we're not going to let 26 seconds define this team. We watched that film and talked about a lot of things. That was a tough thing to swallow and put behind us, but we talked a lot about how 25 or 30 years from now there are going to be guys in that room who will go through things that will be much harder to overcome and it's how you respond to those situations that defines who you are.
"We aren't going to let 26 seconds define this team," he said. "I knew what kind of character we had on this team; we've seen it over and over for the last four years with these older guys. The entire team did a great job of turning the page and putting together two really good practices and then coming back (Saturday) and getting a big win against a good team."
Golding put his trust in his juniors and seniors and they responded by scoring 72 of the team's 79 points, grabbing 31 of the Wildcats' 37 rebounds and playing 174 of a possible 200 minutes led by 147 minutes played by the five starters.
"I thought those guys had earned the opportunity to lead the group today and they responded, just like I knew they would," Golding said. "I love this team and the leadership from the older group has been phenomenal, and it was again since Wednesday night."
The Wildcats got back to being themselves Saturday as they held the Bears – who entered the game averaging 72 points per game – to just 56 and limited them to just 30 percent shooting from the floor (15 of 50). And a UCA team that had made the second-most 3-pointers in the league entering the game (168) had just four as the Wildcats' defense took the 3-point line away from the Bears.
On the offensive end,
Jalone Friday — who didn't score Wednesday night, his first scoreless game in 76 games as a Wildcat — had 15 of his game-high 17 points in the decisive second half He hit 3 of 4 from 3-point range and rebounded from a slow first-half start on both ends of the floor to play a dominating second half.
Senior
Jaren Lewis had a big afternoon as well with 16 points, five rebounds, three assists and one steal in 34 minutes, while senior point guard
Jaylen Franklin had seven points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals in 33 minutes. Junior guard
B.J. Maxwell was terrific as he finished with 16 points, six rebounds, three assists, two blocks and two steals and was in the right spot on a number of occasions for a tip-in, long rebound or defensive deflection.
Junior guard
Payten Ricks had 10 points, four assists and one steal in 30 minutes and senior center
Hayden Farquhar — playing despite taking a hard spill against SFA that aggravated an old injury — had four points, three rebounds, one assist, two blocks and one steal off the bench. Junior guard
Trey Lenox added two points in 13 minutes off the bench.
Leading 39-29 at halftime the Wildcats wasted little time extending the lead as they opened the half on a 7-2 run to extend the advantage to 46-31 with 17:48 left in the game. UCA never got the ACU lead below 11 points the rest of the game. ACU took its first 20-point lead at 65-45 on a tip-in by Maxwell with 7:22 left in the contest. ACU's biggest lead was 27 points on a jumper by Ricks with 1:55 left that made it a 78-51 game.
The win pushes ACU to 17-4 overall and 6-2 in the Southland Conference where they are all alone in second place behind league-leading Sam Houston State. The Bears, meanwhile, fall to 10-11 and 5-3 and into third place in the league.
ACU will be back in action Wednesday (Jan. 30) when it hosts Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at 7 p.m. at Moody Coliseum.
