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BELTON — Over the course of his head coaching debut on Sunday afternoon, Sam Patterson reminded his players of a simple truth: scoring runs are part of every game, but it’s the response to those runs that dictates the result.
And for 36 minutes, UMHB men’s basketball did that well. Neither side gained much separation in the first half as the lead changed hands four times. The Cru went the final 9:36 of that half without making a field goal, giving way to Trinity’s 12-4 run that spanned until halftime, but even then, UMHB provided an ample counter coming out of the break, mounting a 17-4 run of their own less than five minutes into the second half to take a 47-45 lead.
Trinity again pulled in front as the 10-minute mark neared, a 13-2 spurt that put the visiting Tigers up 6. And yet, just over four minutes later, Hudson Johnson’s driving layup capped an 11-5 stretch that tied the score.
But it was the final punch from Trinity that UMHB failed to answer—a 14-4 run to close the game—that ultimately swung the season opener in the visitors’ favor after The Cru led 70-69 with 3:48 to go. Zach Fenn stole UMHB’s baseline inbounds pass with under 45 seconds left and ran the length of the floor for an open layup that put the game away in an 82-74 Trinity win.
“We told our guys, basketball is a game of runs,” said Patterson, who was hired as head coach in April after 15 years as an assistant at Baylor and Oral Roberts. “So we’ll go on a run, Trinity will go on a run, it’s how you respond when your opponent goes on a run that determines how good you are.
“I thought our guys responded well up until that last run they went on. I do think a lot of that was on us—bad turnovers and bad execution on our part—but Trinity is a really well-coached team and they definitely deserve this one.”
It wasn’t the ending the Crusaders had hoped to give Patterson in his first game coaching inside the Mayborn Campus Center. With a large crowd on hand for the annual “Toy Toss” game and UMHB seeking its first regular season win over the Tigers since 2019, The Cru put together a hard-nosed second-half effort that challenged Trinity time and time again.
After shooting just 25.6% in the first half, in large part due to making just one of their final 17 field goal attempts heading into the break, UMHB came back out with a renewed approach. The Crusaders got back to pushing the tempo—a tactic used to limit the impact of Trinity’s size and zone defense—and quickly scored transition points that fueled the momentum. Doing that, and regaining a rhythm from beyond the 3-point arc, The Cru found the weak spots of Trinity’s defense.
Zach May hit his first shot of the season from 3-point range with 18:33 left in the second half, and that bucket gave way to two more 3s, both from Johnson, a transfer guard from Howard Payne. In his return to the Mayborn Campus Center, where he had 21 points in a conference game last February, Johnson put up a team-high 22 points to go along with five assists. The junior’s back-to-back 3s cut Trinity’s lead to four, as the second half started to bear resemblance to the first, with both sides trading scores.
Johnson’s final made shot from long-range came with 3:59 left, when the Round Rock native caught a perfect pass from Elijah Lawrence in the left corner and let the ball fly. That put UMHB in the lead, 70-69, as The Cru again scored off one of Trinity’s 18 turnovers. Trinity answered behind the play of 6’9 forward Will Bronson and Lubbock Christian transfer Dylan Walker, but even with 1:29 left, it was a one-possession game.
Then UMHB caught a break.
A flopping foul against Trinity put Johnson at the free throw line for one shot, with UMHB to get the ball immediately afterwards. Johnson’s free throw cut the deficit to 76-74, and the lead was well within reach for a squad that had already doubled its first-half 3-point total with eight made 3s in the second. But out of a timeout, The Cru turned it over on an inbounds pass. 20 seconds later, they turned it over again, now trailing by four.
And the nail in the coffin came with 37.5 seconds left, when Lawrence couldn’t find an open option on the inbounds pass under the basket and lofted it up high to Coady—his best option—who was well-covered by Fenn. With UMHB in its own half of the court, nobody was behind Coady to contest Fenn’s layup after the steal.
“I thought our adjustment to play faster helped to try to beat the zone down the court in the second half,” Patterson said. “I thought our guys responded well at halftime. But it comes down to execution late-game, and having a couple turnovers out of timeouts is frustrating.
“Like I told our guys, we spent the first two months of the season going over all of our man stuff, then used this week to get after the zone offense. I thought our guys found the soft spots in the zone pretty well and we shot better in the second half.”
Coming into the matchup, UMHB knew Trinity had a size advantage. The Tigers played three—Bronson, Gabe Parr, and Benjamin Wagner—who stood at 6’7 or above. 6’6 center Connor Zamiara, who grabbed 10 rebounds, was UMHB’s tallest in the rotation. That dynamic, combined with Trinity’s execution of its offense under new head coach Marwan Elrakabawy, led to 48 points in the paint for the Tigers, who challenged The Cru in the post all afternoon. Each of Trinity’s first three scoring possessions came on second-chance opportunities after an offensive rebound, and while UMHB wasn’t looking to match the Tigers’ paint points, Trinity’s defense made running the offense through the post especially difficult.
“They tried to double us up in the paint, but when we try to get paint touches, it’s not necessarily to score in the paint,” Patterson noted afterwards. “It’s mainly to get pressure on the rim and then play out of it with kick-outs or dump-downs. I thought we bobbled quite a few basketballs down in traffic in the second half.”
But even as Trinity looked to assert itself in the post, Zach Engels stepped up for UMHB on the boards. Engels pulled down a career-high 14 rebounds, including eight on the offensive end, as he pulled down several between two and even three Trinity players. The senior had six of his eight offensive boards in the opening half, giving UMHB a number of second-chance scoring opportunities.
“Proud of Zach,” Patterson said. “He’s a physical player and he’s really important to our team and our success. We wouldn’t have been in this game if it wasn’t for Zach in the first half, getting all those rebounds.”
Engels also had 15 points, as did Lawrence, a transfer who previously spent time at D1 Oral Roberts and NAIA John Brown. The Cru proved it could score in stretches with new offense Patterson brought with him to Belton, and battled a Trinity team to the wire that received votes in the D3hoops.com Preseason Top 25. There’s no amount of positives that make up for the feeling that a win slipped away on Sunday, but Patterson also recognized postgame that it is still early November. This isn’t a team that will be satisfied with close losses, but it’s also not one that will lose sight of its long-term goal: playing at peak form with an NCAA Tournament bid on the line at the ASC Tournament.
“Every time we step on the court, it’s an opportunity to learn,” Patterson said. “That’s what I told our guys in the locker room after. We need to play our best basketball February 27th and 28th. I’ve been part of mid-major D1 basketball where you’re in a one-bid league and you can play great in November and December, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re not cutting down nets unless you win on the last day of the conference tournament. That’s our mindset.
“Obviously from here to there, we’re trying to win every game and get better throughout the course, but for us, we want to play our best ball in February when we’re playing in the ASC Tournament. I think opportunities like this we can learn from, we can grow from, and be better because of it.”
UMHB hits the road for a non-conference duel at former ASC foe LeTourneau on Thursday. The 7 p.m. matchup in Longview will be LETU’s season opener, with the Yellowjackets set for their first year in the SCAC.
