Poised down the stretch, UMHB men's basketball picks up second-straight ASC win at Howard Payne

BROWNWOOD, Texas — It takes a certain level of tenacity to win against the style UMHB faced on Thursday night.

Up-tempo, high-scoring, and aiming to get to the free throw line often, Howard Payne (8-11, 0-4 ASC) came into the matchup ranked fourth in Division III in scoring offense, averaging 100.3 points per game. It didn’t take long to find out why, as the Yellow Jackets jumped out to a 15-3 lead on their home court just over four minutes in.

But then UMHB (13-5, 2-1 ASC) found its footing. The Cru climbed out of the hole, took the lead, gave it back, and took it again with 3:22 left on an Eli Beard 3-pointer. They tightly held onto the advantage down the stretch, making seven of eight free throws in the final 80 seconds, en route to a well-earned 98-93 victory inside Brownwood Coliseum.

“That ‘crash basketball’ style is hard to play against,” UMHB head coach Clif Carroll said postgame. “You have to stick together. I thought the guys did a great job of keeping their composure and making the plays we needed to make.

“At the end of the day, we had to make some free throws, get some big rebounds, and ended up with the win. A lot of self-inflicted wins and things we’ve got to clean up, but now that we’ve seen the style, and felt it, it’ll be a lot more familiar to us in the future.”

HPU was amongst the higher-scoring programs in the American Southwest Conference last season, averaging 84.5 points per game. But in the present moment, the Yellow Jackets have taken a step further in the direction of fast-paced basketball, embodying some of the same traits seen in programs like Concordia (TX), who UMHB played twice in non-conference play this season. The style of play is difficult to simulate in a practice setting, and the self-inflicted mistakes that Carroll pointed out—including shooting 7-of-13 at the free throw line in the first half—compounded the early challenges for The Cru.

“It’s missing some free throws, turnovers, and particularly in the first half, just not getting back,” Carroll added. “We let them have way too many easy transition buckets. They shot 50 percent from 3 in the first half, but a lot of that was us allowing them to get in rhythm.”

HPU was 9-of-18 from beyond the arc over the first 20 minutes, including 3-of-3 in the game-opening 15-3 run. Establishing their 3-point presence at that juncture, the Yellow Jackets made an early statement, while seemingly throwing off any kind of rhythm UMHB tried to create. For The Cru, it was a perfect example of being punched immediately upon stepping into the ring, and forced to stay patient—yet focused—in an attempt at steadily closing the gap.

“I was really frustrated, because there was a situation we talked about,” Carroll said, when asked about withstanding HPU’s 15-3 run. “And we allowed it to happen. It was nothing more than discipline, and keeping our head and composure. We hit a 3, then gave up a 3, and allowed two transition buckets right away. That’s how you get beat.

“We didn’t come out in the right mindset defensively. You know, playing them, that there will be a lot of chances to score. You have to get enough stops to win. We had watched the week before, when [HPU] had a 35-point lead at LeTourneau and gave it up, so we knew we could get it back. But we had to change what we were doing. Credit to the guys, they figured it out. I’m proud of them.”

It took nearly the entirety of the first half to climb out of the hole, but by halftime, the Crusaders held a 49-48 lead. An 8-0 run that began with B.J. Anderson’s layup at the 9:04 mark shifted the momentum entirely, as HPU’s 10-point lead withered down to a one-possession advantage in the span of 1 minute, 35 seconds. Beard hit two free throws, Connor Zamiara scored inside on a layup, and Beard followed with a jumper, cutting the deficit to 29-27.

An 8-3 run from HPU briefly turned the tide back in favor of the Yellow Jackets, but it didn’t last. Ryan Pondant scored inside for UMHB with 4:40 left in the half, and Co Rose hit a 3-pointer on the next possesssion, earning The Cru their first lead of the evening, 41-40.

The final four minutes saw both sides put up eight points apiece, with five of UMHB’s eight coming from Josh Goings. The Salado native scored on a layup with 42 seconds until halftime, sending UMHB into the intermission with a 49-48 lead.

Carroll’s mention of needing “enough stops to win” against HPU’s high-flying offense played out in the final 20 minutes of a contest that went down to the wire. While The Cru shot for a lower second-half percentage—41.7% in the second compared to 48.6% in the first—and HPU actually improved its shooting percentage, going 15-of-31 from the field (48.4%), those two stats lack plenty of supporting context. And UMHB’s defense is the primary reason behind that.

HPU’s shooting percentage went up in the second half, but so did the Yellow Jackets’ turnover number. They coverted on the same number of field goals as the first half—15—yet turned it over four more times, with 11 turnovers in the last 20 minutes. Additionally, after their 3-point shooting headlined the game’s early minutes, HPU found itself struggling from beyond the arc when it mattered most, and finished 3-of-11 from long-range in the second half. The turnovers, combined with the lack of perimeter shooting, gave The Cru an edge down the stretch.

“You have to do a good job of competing in close-outs and making their drives go where you want them: into your help [defense],” Carroll said. “We had to do a good job of being able to contest at the rim without fouling. A huge part of their offense is getting to the free throw line. I felt like we did a pretty good job, for the most part, of staying clean [on defense] and towards the end of the game, the officials rewarded us for staying a little more consistent.”

UMHB fell behind three times in the second half, but never by more than two, and never for more than a couple of possessions. The Cru, taking advantage of a few HPU turnovers, pulled away from the hosts as the 10-minute mark neared, going up 70-61 on a pair of free throws from Maurice Pinnock. That came with 12:05 left and turned out to be UMHB’s largest lead of the contest, though even with 7:47 to play, the advantage remained at seven.

But over the next 3:22, HPU put together a scoring run with some similarities to the big 15-3 first-half spurt, scoring 13 of the game’s next 17 points. The run was composed entirely of free throws—HPU went 5-of-6 at the line in that span—and shots inside the arc, with three of those being layups. It erased The Cru’s lead, as Mason McGowen put HPU in front, 82-80, on a layup with 4:20 left.

The Cru quickly got it back, thanks to a pair of free throws from Donta Coady and a 3 from Beard. UMHB never trailed again, even after HPU’s Trey Jackson sliced the lead to 89-88 on a 3 with 1:54 to go. With 55 seconds left, the Yellow Jackets were still in contention, with UMHB up 92-90 after HPU’s Hudson Johnson converted on a pair of free throws. Then in one of the biggest possessions of the day, Pinnock extended the Crusader lead back to 4, scoring on a layup with 31 seconds on the clock.

HPU took 20 seconds to counter, cutting the deficit back to 94-92 on Nathan Scott’s layup at the 11-second mark, and was forced to foul immediately after Pinnock received the inbounds pass. Pinnock went to the line twice in the final 11 seconds, making all four free throws to seal the victory.

Pinnock finished a perfect 6-of-6 at the charity stripe, contributing to UMHB’s 17-of-20 free throw shooting mark in the second half. For the game, The Cru went 24-of-33 at the line, making 20 or more free throws in a game for the first time this season.

With just eight league games, the magnitude of each conference victory rises. Now 2-1 in ASC play, the Crusaders head into a matchup of the league’s top two teams on Saturday in Abilene, facing Hardin-Simmons at 3 p.m. CT. The Cowboys are the lone undefeated team remaining in conference action, at 3-0.

“That’s why the Thursday game last week was so disappointing,” Carroll said, referencing the narrow 65-63 loss to ETBU. “You can’t drop a game at home that you’re supposed to win. You put yourself in a hole, so now if you’re going to win the league, you have to win at Hardin-Simmons. You have to put a home loss on their record.

“It’s a tough place to play. So we have to go there and play well. If we win that game, we’re back in first, right where we should be. But it’s not going to be easy. That’s one of the downsides to not having many of these games. We’re capable. We’re a team that should win this thing. We just have to go play that way.”