RICHARDSON, Texas- It took some time early on in the season, through difficult losses and disappointing performances on the road, but the UMHB men’s basketball team seems to have found its stride as the homestretch of the regular season unfolds.
There was no better indication of that fact than on Thursday night, as nearly everything clicked in a dominant first half for The Cru, and UMHB found itself walking off the court with an especially impactful 99-87 road win over UT-Dallas, the first-place team in the American Southwest Conference.
In the process, Josiah Johnson became the ASC’s career leader in points, the latest accolade in a long line of achievements for a fifth-year senior who hails from a northeast Texas town of just over 1,000, and came to UMHB four years ago as part of head coach Clif Carroll’s first recruiting class. Now, in his final collegiate season, Johnson has scored 2,394 points and that number only continues to climb.
And he wasn’t the only one who gave the Comet defense fits on this particular evening. Eli Beard had a career-high 33 points, shooting 12-of-18 from the field, and Josh Goings, who played his first career game with UMHB a little over a month ago—coincidentally against UT-Dallas in Belton–put in 21 points, shooting 3-of-4 from 3-point range.
There hasn’t been a better offensive showing from The Cru all year. The stats back that up.
As UMHB powered its way to victory, the Crusaders set new season-high marks for field goal percentage (52.2 percent), 3-point percentage (52.2 percent), assists (28), and points (99). UMHB had not shot above 50 percent in any game prior, nor had they dished out more than 18 assists.
“The way we started the game, with the ball movement, and finding each other, really made Dallas have to guard,” Carroll said postgame. “It was really good. That’s something that we’ve been wanting to see for a long time and we finally got it done. Hopefully it kind of ignites something, and we can build off of it.”
That is the hope, and with UMHB now in the midst of a three-game win streak—its longest such stretch of the season thus far—the tide seems to have turned for a squad that has taken its fair share of losses over the course of the last three months. UMHB sits a half-game behind ETBU in the ASC standings, currently in fifth place, with three games left on the regular season slate.
This contest meant more than just the improvement of a record for The Cru, however. On Jan. 6, UTD came into the Mayborn Campus Center and outscored UMHB by 20 points in the second half, winning 91-75 in a game the Crusaders felt got away.
“At the end of the day, it’s just us not playing with any kind of passion or intensity,” Carroll said following that loss, almost exactly a month ago. “It’s been like that. That’s the way it was at Texas Lutheran. That’s the way it was at Trinity.”
But it wasn’t that way in Richardson on Thursday night. The Cru made sure the second meeting did not resemble the first. While UTD went on an impressive run led by Rob Wade and Donovan Souter in the second half and cut a 31-point UMHB lead down to six with 5:19 left, the Crusaders simply fought back.
After Wade’s 3-pointer fell through the net and made it 85-79 with the Comets building momentum behind their home crowd, the visitors from Belton answered by scoring seven of the next nine points. A 3-pointer from Johnson took the lead back to double-digits, 92-81.
“The way we lost that game left a bad taste in our mouth,” Carroll said, referencing the previous UTD loss. “Dallas came in and physically beat us and they beat us all over the floor. We didn’t want that to happen again. We wanted to make sure we were ready.
“We had a great week of practice with a lot of competition and enthusiasm. It translated.”
It showed up early and often, especially as Johnson scored seven of UMHB’s first 10 points as The Cru jumped out to a 10-2 lead by the 16:57 mark. Beard connected on two 3-pointers within the game’s first five minutes, and with 15:05 left in the first half, the Crusaders were up 18-6.
“Rhythm and confidence are a big part of this,” Carroll said, when asked about the offensive approach from his team. “Adding Josh [Goings], who is a pass-first guard and is really a high-IQ guy has helped put guys in better positions. And we’re doing a good job of getting some offensive rebounds and second-chance points. If you give Eli Beard enough chances to shoot, he’s going to make it. Same with Jo.”
By the 13:22 mark, Beard converted on yet another 3-pointer, and UMHB’s lead swelled to 23-7. A 7-2 run from the Comets briefly cut the Crusaders’ advantage back to 11, but then came a steal and ensuing layup from Johnson. Then an offensive rebound from Zachary Engels that turned into a 3-pointer from Johnson and a 30-14 lead.
An impressive 14-2 scoring spurt closed the first half with UMHB in a very comfortable position, leading 57-29. And it was Goings who put the bookends on the run.
He sparked it by bringing the ball up the court, turning his back to the defender for a half-second before lurching forwards behind a quick first step. He got past three converging UTD defenders en route to a layup with 4:49 left in the half. Then on UMHB’s final possession of half, he pulled down an offensive rebound between three much-taller Comet defenders and ended up scoring between two of them with six seconds left.
“Josh has done a great job,” Carroll said. “He’s done the best of any mid-year transfer I’ve had of finding a way to fit into the team. He worked his way into the rotation and really earned trust from the guys. Now, we see him as one of the leaders on the team.
“Adding Josh has been big. He had a huge game tonight and was really big in big spots. You put him on the floor with Eli and Josiah, that’s a backcourt that’s really tough to deal with.”
Thursday’s win tested the Crusaders in various ways, especially down the stretch of the second half, and yet they emerged with a convincing victory over the ASC’s top team. It gives UMHB momentum as The Cru now enters its final road test of the regular season, facing Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas, at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
“Jared Fleming is doing a great job coaching those guys,” Carroll said. “We knew going into halftime that we were going to have to have to finish this game. They turned up the pressure, and we turned it over and had eight straight possessions with turnovers at one point. We let them back into it.
“But it never got down to the danger zone. We were mature, took care of the ball, got it out to a 14-point lead, and kind of cruised from there.”
