| Senior Joey Shank drained five 3-pointers in the second half to help UTSA advance to the SLC Championship Game. |
KATY ? Senior Joey Shank scored a game-high 19 points, all in the second half, and UTSA moved into the championship game of the State Farm Southland Conference Basketball Tournament with a 57-55 victory over Nicholls on Friday night at the Merrell Center.
Shank was held scoreless in the first half, as UTSA scored a season-low 19 points in a five-point deficit, but he caught fire after the break by rattling in five 3-pointers to help send the Roadrunners (19-12) into their first conference championship game since winning the 2004 SLC Tournament. The Folsom, Calif., native was 5-for-8 from behind the arc in the second half and in the final minute he dropped in a long trey with the shot clock buzzer going off to help UTSA snag the momentum for good down the stretch.
“Our guys made the plays that they needed to make to win,” third-year head coach Brooks Thompson said. “Defensively, we came out a little flat and let them run their stuff and they were getting what they wanted. Yet they only scored 24 points in the first half. I thought our defensive mistakes were affecting our offense and we weren’t able to get into a groove offensively in the first half.
“In the second half, Joey hit some big threes and it loosened us up. We started to play the way we wanted to play and the way we needed to play to win. That was the difference in the game.”
UTSA will face the winner of the second semifinal game between top seed Stephen F. Austin and No. 4 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at noon on Sunday and the game will be televised on ESPN2. It marks the fifth overall SLC Championship Game appearance for the Roadrunners, who captured league crowns in 1999 and 2004. Coupled with the women's semifinal win over Northwestern State earlier Friday, this will be the first time both basketball teams advanced to the championship in the same year.
Back-to-back threes by Shank within a 40-second span gave UTSA a 38-34 lead midway through the second half. Junior Josh Bonney answered a 3-pointer by Chris Iles with a layup to put the Roadrunners up by three, but Ryan Bathie, who led Nicholls with 18 points, connected from downtown to knot the score at 40-all with just over eight minutes remaining.
There were four more lead changes until Shank extended UTSA’s advantage to 49-45 with his shot clock buzzer-beating three with 55 seconds to play. The Colonels then sent the Roadrunners to the foul line, where junior Omar Johnson, who tallied 11 points, junior Morris Smith IV and Shank combined to go 8-for-9 to help seal the win.
"I just couldn’t get anything to go down in the first half,” Shank, who is now 9-for-15 from behind the arc in the SLC Tournament, said. “I had some good looks and they were finding me, but I just couldn’t get them to go down. Fortunately, I got one to go down pretty early in the second half and that helped our offense get into a better rhythm.”
Shank was 6-of-13 from the floor overall and 2-for-2 from the free throw line in his third-highest scoring output of the season. Johnson finished a perfect 6-for-6 from the line, dished out six assists and registered a pair of steals, while senior Travis Gabbidon pitched in with six points and shared the team lead of six rebounds with Bonney and Johnson.
UTSA made 9-of-20 (45%) from downtown and was 10-of-11 from the charity stripe ? all in the second half - to help overcome a 38.8-percent night from the floor.
UTSA overcame an early 5-0 deficit with 11 unanswered points, holding the Colonels scoreless for 5:48. The Roadrunners pushed their lead to 19-12 on a 3-pointer from Smith IV, but Nicholls finished the half with a 12-0 stretch and took a 24-19 advantage into the locker room.
The Roadrunners made eight of their first 15 field goal attempts, but misfired on their final eight and shot just 34.8 percent in the half. Nicholls made only 10-of-26 (38.5%) from the floor and both teams connected just three times from downtown.
The percentages improved for the Roadrunners after the break, as they shot 42.3 percent (11-26), including 6-for-11 from behind the arc.
"This was a tremendously hard-fought basketball game on both sides,” Thompson said. “You hate to see a team lose, because I think Nicholls did a tremendous job. How much they’ve improved as a team since we played them early on in the year is impressive. It shows what a great coach J.P. is and what kind of job he’s done. Those guys played hard and they play the right way.”
Anatoly Bose joined Bathie in double figures for Nicholls with 17 points. The Colonels, the regular season runners-up, ended their season at 20-11.