WICHITA FALLS, Texas – It came down to the wire for the St. Mary's Men's Basketball as they picked up their first Lone Star Conference victory of the year with a 59-55 win at Midwestern State on Saturday evening.
The Rattlers (4-7, 1-1 Lone Star) built a 16-point advantage, 40-24 with 15:06 remaining in the contest before the Mustangs (5-10, 1-3 Lone Star) mounted the comeback that fell short.
Senior
Mamady Djikine (Paris, France) became the seventh different Rattler this season to lead the team in scoring with a team-best 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field, while both guards
Kobe Magee (San Antonio) and
Ryan Leonard (Kerry, Ireland) added 12 points each. Junior
Emmanuel Ewuzie (San Antonio) came off the bench to lead the game with eight rebounds, while Magee added a game-high six assists.
St. Mary's won the battle of the boards, 44-to-38, and the team has taken the season edge 37.2 to 36.7 over the opposition.
The Rattlers also recorded just 11 turnovers in the game, and scored 12 points off 11 Mustangs miscues.
After building the 16-point lead on a layup by Brewer at the 15:06 mark, the Mustangs went on a 7-0 run to cut the deficit to single digits, but a free throw by senior guard
Caleb Jordan (Midlothian, Texas) and an Ewuzie layup pushed the advantage back to a dozen with 10:26 remaining. The teams went back-and-forth to the 1:40 mark where sophomore
Tyler Caron (Longview, Texas) sank a deep triple to have the scoreboard read 57-48. MSU scored the next seven over 1:19 to make it a two-point game, 57-55 with 21 ticks left. Djikine hit two of his four free throw attempts in the final nine seconds to ice the game at 59-55.
The Rattlers return home to host UT Permian Basin in a rescheduled contest at 4 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 10 and then will host Cameron on Thursday, Jan. 13th at 7:30 p.m. and West Texas A&M at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 15 in a busy week.
INDIVIDUAL PLAYER & TEAM NOTES
- Mamady Djikine is the seventh different Rattler to lead the team in scoring this season. Djikine tied his season-high with 15 points on the evening.
- With six three-pointers in the game, the Rattlers have made four or more triples in all 11 games this year.
- St. Mary's has recorded double figures in offensive rebounds in four straight contests after posting 14 against the Mustangs.
- The 11 turnovers by the Rattlers is the fewest since the team only had 10 at UTSA back on Nov. 29, 2021. It is the third-lowest turnover total of the season.
- With seven rebounds on the day, senior guard Caleb Jordan now has 205 boards for his career. Also in a weird twist of statistics, Jordan has 34 assists and 14 steals this year in 11 games – the same totals he recorded in the 11 games he played last year.
