A 'Must Win'

SMU Ends 8-Game C-USA Losing Streak With 69-66 Win Over Rice

DALLAS – You can call it a must-win for SMU, though Mustangs coach Matt Doherty was hesitant to call it that beforehand. “I didn’t want to put that tag on this game, but I almost did,” he said after SMU held off the Rice Owls on Saturday for its second league win of the season. “I just felt like, we’re at home, [and] we’re playing a team … that we need to beat. I talked about winning. Sometimes I talk more about playing well and then the winning will take care of itself.”

A relieved Doherty said he’s resisted putting must-win pressure on his young players in the past, but this night, he said, “we had to play with a sense of urgency, at a high level of urgency.”

After all, if the cellar-dwelling Mustangs (8-17, 2-10), couldn’t beat their upstairs neighbors, the 11th place Owls, at home … well, let’s not even go there.

Robert Nyakundi hit 4 of 5 3-point shots for SMU. He and Mike Walker scored 14 points each to lead the Mustangs.

“It feels great,” said SMU senior center Bamba Fall, whose two blocked shots in the final minute helped seal the Owls’ fate. “We needed this win.”

“I think that it was something we needed to do,” said guard Mike Walker, who came off the bench to stroke in 4 of 6 shots from 3-point range.

Forward Robert Nyakundi was also feelin’ it, sinking 4 of 5 from beyond the arc. Overall, the Mustangs took a season-high 27 3-point shots, hitting on 11, which matched their season-high against Houston Baptist last November.

Nyakundi and Walker led SMU with 14 points each and freshman guard Paul McCoy added 13.

Walker said the downtown shooting was not necessarily the game plan. “We just tried to let the game come to us,” he said. “It wasn’t like we were taking forced 3s or anything like that. Really, a lot the shots were open because they were focused so much on Paul and [guard] Derek [Williams.]”

The Owls also jacked it up, hitting 10 of 24 3s, including 7 of 15 in the second half. Doherty said he was “really impressed” with Rice guard Rodney Foster, who led the Owls with 18 points. Rice center Trey Stanton (6-10, 230), whom Doherty said “scares the mess out of me,” was held to 6 points and 6 boards.

SMU led by as many as 16 points in the first half and took a 38-28 lead into halftime.

Owls Rally

Rice (8-18, 3-9) went ahead, 49-48, on a Foster 3 with 12:20 remaining and a Mustang collapse looked imminent. But after five lead changes down the stretch, and trailing 64-62, SMU took the lead for good on a cool McCoy 3 at the 3:14 mark. Nyakundi followed with a jumper that pushed the Mustangs’ advantage to 67-64 with two minutes left.

To make things good and squirrelly, though, SMU wouldn’t score again until 2 seconds remained. During that drought, the Mustangs had three one-and-one free throw chances to put the game away – and missed the front-end each time, driving Doherty nearly nuts. “I was, like, ‘Oh, my gosh.” Doherty said. “‘What’s going on? This isn’t fair.’ I was begging. I was pleading. I was saying all kinds of prayers.”

Bamba Fall puts in 2 of his of 10 points for SMU. Below, Alex Malone battles for position with Rice's Trey Stanton (15).

Finally, with two ticks left and SMU’s lead a precarious 67-66, Walker stepped to the line for two shots and sank them both - putting an end to the madness.

Cory Pflieger’s buzzer 3-attempt from the corner for Rice missed.

The difference this night? “A little luck,” chuckled Doherty. “A little Bamba, blocking shots.” Fall had four blocks in the game (for the sixth time this season), and a team-high 12 rebounds.

The win was a nice way for SMU to put last Wednesday’s 43-point loss at No. 5 Memphis behind them. “It was a real tribute to these guys and their character,” Doherty said of his team. “It would have been easy for them to quit and hang their heads, and they haven’t. I’m proud of them for that.”

Results Count

Doherty, sounding more results-oriented than earlier this season, pointed to a scoreboard and said, “At the end of the day, that’s a scoreboard. It’s not a draw-charge board, it’s not a rebound board. It’s a scoreboard and the ball’s gotta go through the net.”

The Mustangs turned the ball over a season-low seven times against the Owls, though Doherty downplayed it a bit. “Neither one of our teams … really press,” he said. “It’s a little bit more of a half-court, man-to-man [game] so weren’t not going to generate a lot of turnovers.”

“But, with that said, there are teams that we’ve turned the ball over against where they weren’t a pressing team either. That’s got to be a focal point. We had way too many obviously at Memphis with 22.”

SMU held a key 14-4 edge over Rice in offensive rebounds, which led to 11 second-chance points. Overall, the Mustangs thumped the Owls, 39-31, on the boards.

Next Two for SMU:

• Wednesday, February 25, 8 p.m. CT, @ UTEP

• Saturday, February 28, 7 p.m. CT, Tulsa

SMU Basketball Notes:

• SMU-Rice attendance: 3,101

• In SMU’s 69-57 loss at Rice on January 14, the Mustangs shot 3 of 24 from 3-point range, or 12.5 percent.

• Freshman guard Paul McCoy, averaging 13.9 points per game, is on track to be SMU’s first freshman to lead the team in scoring. He’s been the Mustangs’ leading scorer 11 times this season, one back of the freshman record set by Jeryl Sasser in 1997-98.

• At Saturday’s game, SMU hosted Pony Up for the Cure, an effort to raise awareness in the fight against breast cancer. Mustang players wore pink Cure T-shirts during warm-ups and SMU coaches, cheer and pom squads also wore pink apparel. Breast cancer survivors were offered free tickets to the game and half of proceeds from pink T-shirts sales went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Quotable Doherty

• On Bamba Fall and Frank Otis not starting against Rice: “Yesterday in practice, Bamba and Frank were not as sharp as I expect. So I told them yesterday, ‘You’re not starting.’ I said it in front of the team. Starting is a reward. When somebody needs a wakeup call, instead of yelling and screaming, I just say ‘Change jerseys. Bamba, put a red jersey on. Frank, put a red jersey on.’”

• On whether Doherty attended Friday’s high school exhibition games, hosted by SMU, which featured match-ups between top Dallas area teams: “I was at all the games and left at 11:15 last night, after the first quarter of the last game. It was great to have that on our campus. It was great traffic. Again, Dallas is important to us and to have the Dallas teams, the Dallas fans, on our campus and seeing what’s going on here, it will pay dividends down the road.”