SEARCY, Ark. — The Arkansas Tech men's basketball team couldn't overcome a hot-shooting Harding squad in the second half, falling to their Great American Conference rival 89-80 Thursday night at Rhodes Field House.

The Wonder Boys (8-10, 4-6 GAC) got a season-high 24 points—on eight 3-pointers—and 12 rebounds from Tyler Friedel, and D.J. Jethroe chipped in with 13, Mike Balogun with 12 and Nick Wayman with 10, but the Bisons (8-8, 6-4 GAC) finished the game by making nine of their final 11 field goals to close out any comeback attempt.

"We knew coming in here that Harding is a lot, lot better at home than on the road," head coach Chad Kline said. "That's why they haven't lost a ton of games at home. I thought it was a high, high level game. I thought we played pretty good, to be honest, it just wasn't good enough. It felt like two heavyweights going back and forth, and I thought we played as hard as we've played in a long time."

Tech won the tip and started the game off with a thunderous alley-oop from Balogun to Gary Gaskins. A layup from Wayman made it 4-0 less than a minute in, as the Wonder Boys held the lead for more than four minutes before the half turned into a back-and-forth affair. The first 20 minutes featured nine lead changes and six ties as both teams traded hot streaks.

From the 16:10 mark until 11:58, the game was either tied or within two points. Harding went on a quick burst to go up by five, but back-to-back 3-pointers from Jethroe and Balogun, around a Friedel block, pushed Tech back into the lead with 9:19 left. That started a stretch that saw the Wonder Boys hit four triples on five possessions to stick with the Bisons. A Jethroe layup at 4:16 gave Tech a 31-29 advantage, and although it would be its last lead of the half, a jumper from Clarence Willard and a 3-pointer from Friedel tied the game up two more times. The Bisons would hit their last five shots from the field, and go on a 5-0 run over the final 1:07 to take a 42-36 lead into the locker room.

Harding stretched that run to 10-0 with five points in under two minutes to start the second half, going up 47-36 at the 18:14 mark. The Wonder Boys responded with a 22-10 streak of their own over the next 6:47, using three more Friedel 3-pointers to take a 58-57 lead, its first in nearly 12 minutes. The teams traded buckets twice, and a Harding 3 put the hosts back up by four with 8:33 to go before back-to-back layups out of Willard and Bryson Fletcher tied it back up at 64-all at 8:11.

A pair of 3s over a 35-second span, followed by a layup pushed the Bisons' lead out to eight. Friedel's sixth trey of the night temporarily made it a five-point game, but Harding answered immediately with one of its own to start a 16-3 run that let the Bisons pull away.

Tech shot 29-of-59 for the game, including 15-of 28 from deep, and won the rebounding battle 38-30.

The Wonder Boys return to action Saturday afternoon at 3, facing Henderson State at Tucker Coliseum.