UMHB men's basketball pulls off upset of D-I Texas State in 71-65 victory

Photo by Mike Zayas/True To The Cru

SAN MARCOS, Texas- The UMHB men’s basketball team entered Tuesday night’s matchup against D-I Texas State with nothing to lose.

The Crusaders were coming off a loss to ETBU four days prior, a loss that dropped them to 1-2 in ASC play. They were unranked for the first time this season by D3hoops.com on Monday, after beginning the year ranked No. 2. There may have been doubt on the outside, but internally, head coach Clif Carroll and his team had no doubt in what they had.

And that very fact was displayed underneath the bright lights of Strahan Arena, facing a Texas State squad that entered the matchup 6-4 on the season. UMHB trailed only once for a span of 21 seconds late in the game, and emerged with an impressive 71-65 win that rocked the D-III world.

VICTORY #d3hoops pic.twitter.com/g4JaehYOyq
— True To The Cru (@TrueToTheCru) December 14, 2022

Leading into the matchup, no D-III team had beaten a D-I this season in 164 contests. To add to it, it was an official game for Texas State, so the Bobcats did not withhold any punches.

“It just goes to show you that we’re one of the best teams in the country,” Carroll said postgame. “We’ve had a rough couple of weeks. We haven’t been ready to play these games. We knew we had to play great to have a chance. And we did.”

UMHB entered the final two minutes of the contest having led for the game’s entirety. But at the same time, Texas State was closing in. From the 3:11 mark to the 1:41 mark, Bobcat forward Nate Martin, standing at 6’8, scored six straight points, the final two coming on a layup that took a 62-60 lead.

Then Josiah Johnson sprang into action. The UMHB guard, playing in the same arena in which he had made his UMHB debut three seasons earlier, put five points on the board in 43 seconds, highlighted by an off-balance jump-shot that gave the Cru a 65-62 advantage.

“At the end of the day, you have to close the game,” Johnson said simply.

After Martin’s layup with 1:41, the Bobcats went 100 seconds without converting on another shot. UMHB, as it had done so effectively throughout the contest, did not allow an offensive rebound in that span, closing the victory by making all six of its free throws in the final 30 seconds. Texas State shot just 37.8 percent from the field in the contest, and from three-point range, just 2-of-17.

“Defensively we were really good,” Carroll said. “Our positioning was really good. Our feet were where they needed to be. We played really hard on top of it. We hadn’t had that yet this year.”

It was a sort of full circle moment for the UMHB head coach, who took his then-inexperienced squad of mostly freshmen and sophomores to San Marcos on Nov. 25, 2020, in his first game as the Crusaders’ head coach. A 98-59 loss was the result on that evening, but now, with a squad of veterans carrying NCAA Tournament experience, UMHB looked, and played, like a much different team.

“Last time we played them here, they beat us by 40,” Carroll noted. “This shows that we’re growing. You look at the film of Josiah from that first year to Josiah today, he was big for us tonight. Of course this doesn’t go on our record, but this experience is going to be great.”

Johnson put together an exceptional showing that went beyond just his clutch shooting late in the second half. He had eight first half points, connecting on a pair of three-pointers within the final 10 minutes of the opening period, and tallied a team-high 25 points in the victory. He was 10-of-11 at the free-throw line, and pulled down seven rebounds.

“It’s definitely a confidence-builder,” Johnson said postgame. “It had been a disappointing start [to the season] but as a team we weathered the storm. And in a game like this, even though it doesn’t count on our record, it counts mentally.”

Johnson shoots a free throw against Texas State (photo by Mike Zayas/True To The Cru)

Luke Feely scored the game’s first points on a driving layup, and a Ty Prince three-pointer soon followed. Confident and collected, something was different in UMHB’s composure as compared to Saturday’s loss to ETBU. Leading 5-4 at the first media timeout, the Crusaders did more than just rely on their shooting in the minutes that followed, though the offensive attack only got better.

The Cru put together an exceptional defensive effort, holding the Bobcats to plenty of “one-and-done” possessions. In other words, Texas State had little chance for offensive rebounds or second-chance points on the offensive end.

“They feel like they’re a team that can just shoot it until they score,” Carroll said of Texas State. “We knew coming in that we had to rebound to have a chance. Outrebounding them in the first half was big-time. We let them come back in the second half, they beat us by two, but when we needed big rebounds, we got them.”

By the 9:34 mark, UMHB led by double digits, 18-8, thanks to a Nathan Stolz three-pointer, and soon extended that lead to 21-8 on a Braedyn Dawes three-pointer. The Crusaders found a significant amount of success from beyond the arc in the opening half, shooting 54 percent (7-of-13).

Down the stretch in the first half, Texas State did all it could to close the gap, cutting the deficit to nine with 4:38 left on Jordan Mason’s layup, but UMHB issued an immediate response, putting together an 8-2 run in the span of 1:25, on a pair of three-pointers from Prince and Kyle Wright. After Prince connected on a long-range shot with 3:42 remaining, Texas State’s Mason Harrell turned the ball over on the other end of the floor, and UMHB seized the opportunity, with Wright coming up with a steal, passing it to Johnson, who then passed it right back for an easy layup.

By halftime, UMHB led 36-24, having shot 40 percent and outrebounded Texas State 21-19 in the opening half.

The second half followed suit, with Gibson Hearne swishing a three from the right corner on UMHB’s first possession.

As the second half progressed, Texas State inched closer and closer, drawing the home crowd back into the game little by little, eventually culminating in the hectic final three minutes that saw the lead change in the Bobcats’ favor, then go back to UMHB. Relying on its post presence and size in the paint, Texas State began working the ball inside. With 9:01 left, Prince’s layup fell through the net, giving UMHB a 51-41 lead. It was the last double-digit lead the Cru held, with the Bobcats mounting a desperate 13-5 run that cut the margin to two, before a Johnson three-pointer gave UMHB a little breathing room.

That breathing room did not last long, of course.

“We knew that [Texas State] was not going to just go down and let us win by 15,” Carroll noted. “They’re a good team. They beat a good UT-Arlington team last weekend. But we’re an experienced basketball team. We’ve won games in this situation before.”

And for Carroll at least, there was a little added inspiration, considering the day began with the passing of Mike Leach, head football coach at Mississippi State, who was the head football coach at Texas Tech when Carroll began his coaching career as a student assistant with the Red Raiders basketball team.

“I’m probably going to get emotional,” Carroll said with a quiver in his voice. “Coach Leach was one of my heroes. We had the swinging sword up in the locker room tonight. I hope somewhere Coach Leach is proud of us.”

And the UMHB community, both those in attendance Tuesday night, and those watching from afar over the ESPN+ broadcast, were proud too, for their team demonstrated an unmatched poise in what will go down as one of the more notable wins of the season.

“We have to learn from it,” Carroll said. “We have to understand why we were good today. Why we were bad against Concordia and ETBU. And take this into the next step of the season and go on and become the team that we should be.”

Up Next

UMHB hosts Howard Payne Thursday night in the Cru’s first home game of the 2022 season. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. from the Mayborn Center in Belton.