Photo by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru
MARSHALL, Texas — The UMHB men’s basketball team walked into Ornelas Gym for its first game of American Southwest Conference play on Wednesday night with the same level of grit and toughness that they displayed in their final non-conference tilt 10 days before.
And in a road environment where The Cru had won just twice in the last decade, those intangibles paid dividends against an ETBU squad far more capable than its 6-13 record revealed.
Pushed by the Tigers for the better part of both halves, relentless offensive rebounding and lockdown perimeter defense proved to be the two constants for the visitors from Belton, who posted a 16-point advantage in second-chance scoring and held the hosts to a 3-of-20 mark from 3-point range.
Even on the road, the Crusaders made it a priority to be the aggressors in their ASC opener, finally breaking through in an 11-0 run with under eight minutes left. That spurt took UMHB’s lead from 2 to 13, putting the Tigers away en route to a 71-62 victory. It gave The Cru, now 14-6 overall, its first win in a conference opener since the 2021-22 campaign.
“To win a game on the road in a tough environment in conference play where everybody has a clean slate, I was proud of our effort,” UMHB head coach Sam Patterson said. “I thought we were the aggressor from the jump, which is good for a team on the road. You want to be aggressive, you want to get to the free throw line, you want to make plays in the paint. I thought we set the tone early.”
It was never going to be an up-and-down, high-scoring affair in Marshall. ETBU came in with the ASC’s No. 1 scoring defense and the 45th-slowest tempo in the country, more comfortable running half-court sets and preventing fast-break opportunities than playing at a quick pace. For a chunk of the contest, the Tigers dictated the game’s rhythm in that direction, using an effective press that slowed the Crusader offense down.
But it didn’t last. Once UMHB had a chance to lean into its own preferred style—pushing the ball in transition and going fast—ETBU fell back in the game’s closing minutes.
“The chess match,” Patterson added, “is that they want to drag the clock out and play fewer possessions. We want to push the pace and be able to run after stops. When we finally had our run in the second half, it was based on getting out after turnovers we forced and putting the pedal to the metal and trying to score early.
“I felt like we were on the verge of those runs a few different times [before], but we were never able to solidify it with enough stops. Our defense buckled down there in the second half, and we were able to create some easy offense off of it.”
That was the formula for the 11-0 run that pushed UMHB’s lead to 63-50 with 5:29 left on leading scorer Hudson Johnson’s lone 3-pointer of the night. In the same stretch that the Crusaders shot 4-of-6 from the field with a pair of 3s, ETBU turned it over four times. Each of those takeaways translated directly into points for Patterson’s squad, who had seven steals and 17 points off turnovers in the win.
It underscored the theme of the night for the Crusaders. While the pure shooting metrics weren’t especially flattering—their 23 made field goals tied for a season-low and they shot 27.8% from 3—UMHB figured out how to put points on the board by way of its defense and rebounding.
There were the points off turnovers and fast-break scores on the heels of timely defensive stops. There were also plenty of offensive rebounds; 17, to be exact. Extending possessions by attacking the glass is nothing new for a team that entered Wednesday’s duel ranked No. 7 in D-III in offensive rebound average, but it had an especially prominent role against the Tigers. 23 of UMHB’s 71 points (32.3%) were the result of a second-chance opportunity, an element that slowly wore ETBU down both physically and mentally.
“We got several free throw line [offensive] rebounds, which are just backbreakers for the other team,” Patterson noted.
None provided a bigger swing in momentum than Zach Engels’ rebound off Josiah Wray’s free throw miss with 1:37 until halftime. With ETBU leading, 33-32, thanks to Orlando Gooden III’s layup 12 seconds earlier, Engels grabbed the ball in mid-air, before immediately kicking it out to Elijah Lawrence on the perimeter. Without hesitation, Lawrence fired up a 3-pointer that fell through the bottom of the net, taking back the advantage in yet another one of the game’s nine lead changes.
“Those are huge plays, and they often start runs for you,” Patterson said afterwards. “Like I said, they’re backbreakers for the other team, because maybe you guarded well for 25 seconds or fouled a player who missed a free throw and now you give the ball back by not getting the rebound. We had the grit and determination to just do what we do. It’s part of our identity and something our guys really hang their hat on.”
UMHB doubled up ETBU, 10-5, on the offensive glass in a first half that was tightly-contested. The largest lead for either squad in the opening 20 minutes was just seven, coming with 3:43 when Johnson made four straight free throws in one trip to the charity stripe, benefitting from a technical foul whistled on ETBU’s Nathan Fleming.
But even then, the Tigers whittled the deficit back down to a single point only 90 seconds later, eventually taking the lead for a brief moment before Lawrence’s 3. A jumper from Johnson, who scored 24 points, gave UMHB a 37-33 advantage at the intermission. They may have shot just 2-of-10 from beyond the arc and turned it over nine times, but the Crusaders reached the halfway point in front.
“[ETBU] Coach [Chris] Lovell does a really good job of gameplanning and trying to take away what you do well,” Patterson noted afterwards. “So we didn’t want to get caught up in getting frustrated if we were missing shots. That was really a focus going into it. We didn’t want to be high or low based on shot-making.”
They had won before on difficult shooting nights in unfamiliar gyms—the 64-60 neutral-court win over Salisbury on Jan. 17 was a prime example—and proved that capability yet again on Wednesday. ETBU, who played No. 14 Christopher Newport within two points in a true road game just 11 days before, gave everything it had in front of a home crowd of nearly 300. The Tigers worked back into it in the second half after falling behind by eight, first tying the score, then taking a 48-47 lead on a pair of free throws from Colorado transfer Jack Pease with 10:04 to go.
But that only set up UMHB’s key run minutes later, spearheaded by junior forward Grant Jessen. The 6-foot-4 playmaker came into the contest with the second-highest plus-minus amongst UMHB’s bench players (+36) and showed why in the early portion of The Cru’s 11-0 spurt. Jessen first got to the free throw line, where he extended the lead to 53-50, then hit a 3 on The Cru’s next trip down the floor. 20 seconds later, the Prosper, Texas native got out in transition and scored inside, just four seconds after Lawrence came up with a steal.
“Grant was a spark for us,” Patterson said of the junior, who had eight points, four rebounds, and two steals in 23 minutes.
Jessen was one of five Crusaders with at least eight points in the victory, as Lawrence had 11 and Engels and Donta Coady each scored 10 in addition to Johnson’s 24. Coady, Lawrence, and Connor Zamiara added six rebounds apiece in a fairly balanced night for the visitors from Belton, who raised their record on the road to 5-4.
They get another opportunity to increase the road win-loss mark on Saturday, traveling west to face Howard Payne (12-8, 0-1 ASC) inside the spacious Brownwood Coliseum at 3 p.m. CT. Aside from the storyline of opening conference play with consecutive road games for only the second time since 2017, battling ETBU and HPU in the same week gives UMHB the unique experience of going from playing one of the slowest-paced teams in Region 10 to the fastest. HPU ranks No. 9 nationally in the D3Datacast.com Adjusted Tempo Ratings and as of Wednesday, boasted the sixth-highest-scoring offense in D-III (95.2 PPG).
“Our goal tonight was to have 10 or fewer turnovers, and by the first media timeout, we already had three,” Patterson noted. “Looking ahead at the next game against Howard Payne, that’s how they thrive, creating points off turnovers. So we’re really going to have to buckle that down before we play on Saturday.”
The initial ASC slate called for UMHB’s league opener to come in Belton last Saturday against Hardin-Simmons, but due to the severe winter weather across Texas, that contest was pushed to Feb. 10. It left The Cru with a 10-day break between games, its longest gap since the Christmas break, but they rolled with the punches, shifting the focus to ETBU right away.
In a competitive four-team league with just six conference games, every matchup carries with it immense importance. They cleared the first hurdle on Wednesday night. Five more remain.
“To get a road win here and have an opportunity to validate it with another road win, I know our guys are excited about this game on Saturday,” Patterson said, looking ahead. “We scheduled the non-conference to prepare us for games like this. So it’s really just the anticipation.
“Our guys were excited to play a game after what felt like a long time after the Virginia trip. I don’t think they mind the back-to-back and they’re mature enough to handle all the recovery and preparation that goes into these conference games.”
