NEWPORT NEWS, Virginia — Undersized against the Christopher Newport frontcourt and outmatched on this particular afternoon from the 3-point line, UMHB men’s basketball found itself buried in a double-digit hole for much of the second half.
But Sam Patterson and his squad never abandoned the fight against the 17th-ranked Captains, who entered with a 33-4 home record over the last three seasons.
“Throughout the second half, I wasn’t thinking any deficit was too much for this group,” Patterson, UMHB’s first-year head coach, remarked afterwards.
The Crusaders made up for the lack of long-range shooting production by repeatedly getting to the free throw line in the closing minutes. Defensively, they held CNU without a field goal for the final 4:50, forcing seven straight misses. In the end, they made a game of it late despite trailing by 14 seven minutes before, cutting the deficit all the way to three with 14 seconds left.
But time ultimately ran out on the comeback, not unlike a few of UMHB’s earlier losses in this 2025-26 campaign. Elijah Lawrence’s game-tying 3-point attempt missed off the rim with five seconds to go, and Colin Hines tracked down the defensive rebound for CNU, securing the Captains’ 93-88 victory in front of a large crowd inside the Freeman Center.
“I thought we did a great job of managing the game for 38 minutes,” CNU head coach John Krikorian said postgame on the CNU broadcast. “Of course, when you’re playing a team like that, who’s a Top 30 team, they’re not going to go away. They can hit shots.”
That is exactly what UMHB did with its back against the wall, from Zach May’s 3-pointer with 9:30 left to the 13-of-15 mark at the free throw line in the last five minutes. In their non-conference finale, the visitors from Belton didn’t post their best offensive performance—The Cru shot 7-of-25 from 3-point range and 40.6% from the field—but they displayed fortitude and tenacity. And Patterson was pleased by that aspect of it, especially on the road on the second day of a back-to-back against a nationally-ranked foe.
“I thought our guys fought and overcame a lot to have a chance at the end to tie the game up,” Patterson said. “I’m proud of the effort to stay in the fight and execute down the stretch to have a chance.”
Leading scorer Hudson Johnson served as the primary catalyst in the comeback, even on a day in which the ASC’s leader in 3-pointers per game went 0-for-4 from beyond the arc. The senior guard had just two points at halftime but scored 20 in the second half, highlighted by an 8-of-11 mark at foul line.
With 3:35 left, he drove to the lane and got a layup to fall, pulling The Cru back within single digits, 83-75. A minute later, after Connor Zamiara and Zach Engels each connected on a pair of free throws, Johnson got the charity stripe and cut the deficit to four with two free throws of his own. In the final minute, the Salado native added a layup and two more free throws, making it a one-possession game for the first time since the 7:04 mark of the first half.
But the most crucial free throws came on UMHB’s next trip down the floor, when Donta Coady drew a foul on a 3-point shot. With The Cru trailing by five, Coady—a 44% free throw shooter on the season—stepped to the line. With the pressure on, the senior exceeded his season percentage in a big way, making all three shots to narrow CNU’s lead to 90-88.
When Tyson Henderson missed his first free throw on the other end, the reality of the contest became clear to the crowd of over 500. Regardless of the result of Henderson’s next free throw—which he made—UMHB would get the ball with a shot to at least tie it.
“The execution down the stretch of the last 2 1/2 minutes was great,” Patterson said. “Everything that we needed to happen, defensively and offensively, happened. Guys that had to get a stop, or intentionally foul, or get to the free throw line, did that.”
Lawrence dribbled high atop the arc for several seconds on the last possession, looking for an open teammate. But nobody shook free, as CNU, the eighth-most efficient defense in the country, locked down with its lead on the line. So Lawrence instead put up a long 35-foot attempt as the clock wound down, seeking his fourth 3 of the contest. It nearly went in too, hitting the front of the rim before bouncing off the backboard as CNU’s Toa Hollenbeck tipped the rebound out to Hines.
“That last play, I had Hudson coming off a couple screens to get him a look, either from 3 or we had some time if he wanted to attack downhill,” Patterson added. “[CNU] did a good job of taking him out. But I thought we got a decent look there to tie it by Elijah.”
UMHB outscored CNU, 54-47, in the second half, with a 22-of-27 mark at the free throw line in that stretch. Across both halves, the Crusaders were 29-of-35 (82.9%), their second-best free throw percentage in a single game this season, setting new season-highs in made FTs and FT attempts.
But it was what preceeded the final stretch that kept CNU in front. UMHB outscored the Captains, 13-12, in the game’s first five minutes, and finished on a 17-10 spurt in the last 4:17. But in between, the hosts held the edge, paced by Hollenbeck’s hot hand offensively and relentless physicality across the board on the defensive end.
Hollenbeck, a 6’3 guard who came off the bench to play 27 minutes, converted on each of his first six 3-point attempts in a career-high 32-point performance, turning out to be the difference-maker for an offense that had just 61 points in Saturday’s win over ETBU. Hollenbeck’s first 3 gave CNU a 15-13 lead with 14:16 left in the first half, and he lit up the scoreboard from there. By halftime, the junior had 21, contributing heavily to the Captains’ 46-34 lead at the break.
While Hollenbeck made several big plays in the opening half, no sequence proved more impactful than the 71-second stretch between the 7:53 and 6:42 marks. Shortly after checking back into the game, the guard broke a 24-24 tie with a layup, then extended the lead with 3s on each of CNU’s next two possessions.
Both of those 3s were fueled by steals on the defensive end, as the Captains enforced their will in the 10 minutes leading into halftime. Back-to-back turnovers helped CNU stretch its lead to eight at that point, and even when UMHB re-tied the score at 32 apiece minutes later, the Crusaders went the final 5:28 of the first half without making a field goal. The drought was compounded by the fact that The Cru turned the ball over 10 times in the last 10 minutes of the half, all while CNU went 5-of-7 from beyond the arc.
“Turnovers were definitely a big part of that half,” Patterson said. “We had 12 at the half, and we were down 12. It was very similar to the Redlands game, and that’s kind of what we told them at halftime. We were down 12 at the half against Redlands and had a high number of turnovers then, and focused on that in the second half. We only had 2 in the second half against Redlands and tonight, we had only four in the second half.
“A bunch of those turnovers were in the deep paint, and Newport does a really good job of, anytime they see your back as a defender, they attack. They try to backtip and collapse on that, and we can talk about it all we want, but once the guys experience it, they get more of a feel for it. We made better decisions in the second half.”
That considered, it was no surprise UMHB’s offense took a step forward coming out of halftime, recording three more assists and two more made shots. The defense improved too, holding CNU to a 2-of-8 clip from 3-point range after surrendering nine 3s in the first half. But it took time for those aspects to take effect, and the Captains didn’t give in easily, gaining their largest lead of the day, 76-61, with 8:28 left on Isaiah Dozier’s 3.
Before Johnson’s layup with 3:35 to go, the closest UMHB had gotten to CNU’s lead was eight, when 6’6 big man Josiah Wray connected on his third 3-pointer of the season with 12:52 remaning. But it was plays like Wray’s 3 that got the ball rolling for UMHB to eventually make a game of it late.
“The first half was much more their style, and then in the second half, we were able to get out and score,” Patterson commented. “I thought our best offense came in transition. We knew they’d be in drop coverage on ball screens so we wanted our bigs to pop after those ball screens. Connor hit a 3 and Josiah hit a 3 to keep them honest. Things started to open up from there.”
Even still, it was tough sledding against a disciplined, hard-nosed CNU defense that keyed in on Johnson from the very beginning. While Johnson broke through in the second half by driving hard to the rim and drawing fouls, UMHB’s leading scorer wasn’t given many opportunities to let it fly from beyond the arc, as CNU denied opportunities to even get the ball into his hands.
“They did a good job of guarding Hudson,” said Patterson. “We started to use him more as a screener and it started to open up things more for us, trying to use some of their aggression against them. Hudson did a good job of playing through all the physical play they were playing against him off the ball. He kept his head, made the right plays, and got other guys involved.”
UMHB finished with a fairly balanced scoring effort, as Lawrence, Coady, Engels, and Zamiara each scored nine points or more. Lawrence, who accounted for three of The Cru’s seven made 3s, had 16 in his highest-scoring effort since Dec. 19. Aside from the starters, Grant Jessen chipped in with seven and Wray had five off the bench.
Sunday’s result didn’t yield the result UMHB wanted, but it was a test they needed. The most crucial part of the regular season—the ASC portion of the schedule—has arrived. And The Cru heads into that stretch having played four nationally-ranked oppoenets, with a 2-2 record in those contests, and a 13-6 non-conference mark overall. It is the best overall winning percentage of any of the ASC’s four teams at this point.
“We subdivide this season into four parts: you’ve got your preseason, you’ve got non-conference, you’ve got conference, and you’ve got the postseason,” Patterson said afterwards. “So we’re halfway through. I definitely feel like we’ve grown a lot since Nov. 9 when we played Trinity in the opener.
“You look at our resume right now, we’ve beaten some tough teams on the road, we’ve beaten tough teams at a neutral site, and we’ve beaten tough teams at home. We’ve gotten great experience, and I would chalk up non-conference as a definite positive for us.
“But that time is behind us. Now everybody is zero and zero. No matter how non-conference went for anybody in the country, it’s a clean slate from here on out. We can’t rely on what’s been done in the past; we have to buckle down and understand we’re going to get everybody’s best shot. It starts with Hardin-Simmons on Saturday at home.”
UMHB welcomes the Cowboys to the Mayborn Campus Center for its conference opener on Feb. 24 at 3 p.m. CT. HSU (12-8, 1-0 ASC) is coming off a 101-86 conference-opening win of its own over Howard Payne this past Saturday. UMHB is 6-2 at home this season and sitting at No. 45 in Monday’s updated NCAA Power Index (NPI) rankings, with HSU as the ASC’s No. 2 team in NPI at No. 94.
UMHB Stat Leaders
Points: Hudson Johnson (22), Elijah Lawrence (16), Zach Engels (10, Donta Coady (10)
Rebounds: Connor Zamiara (9), Zach Engels (5), Donta Coady (4)
Assists: Donta Coady (4), Hudson Johnson (2), Zach Engels (2), Connor Zamiara (2)
