RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas Tech men's basketball team left little drama in their Monday night matchup against Harding as Tech eased by their rivals, 87-75.
The game with Harding represented the 11
th game in Great American Conference action for the Wonder Boys, bringing them to the halfway point of the conference slate. The subsequent win over the Bisons (5-12, 1-10 GAC) puts the Wonder Boys' conference record at 9-2, which remains good for a tie for second place in the standings and one game back of first place. It also is the best conference record over the first 11 games for the Wonder Boys since the 2011-12 season.
That year, the Wonder Boys finished 13-3 in the inaugural year of the GAC and won the league's first regular season title.
Monday night's game started off with the two teams trading early scoring runs. Harding had the first one and jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first minute and a half. Tech responded to that with an 11-0 run to swing the lead in their favor.
The game eventually settled in throughout the first half with four lead changes and two tie scores during the middle portion of the opening period. With just over seven and a half minutes to go in the first half, however, Tech broke a 22-all tie and started another 11-0 run to push their lead out to double digits.
Harding battled back some and got as close as four points of Tech's lead before going into the locker room trailing by a half dozen.
The Bisons would go on to trail for the entirety of the second half but did get within one point early in the second half before the Wonder Boys eventually claimed complete control of the game and cruised to the 12-point victory.
Statistically, the Wonder Boys shot over 50% for the game, making 35-of-65 field goals. From three-point range, they shot 33% (6-of-18), but were nearly unblemished from the charity stripe, missing just one shot out of 12 attempts. The success at the free throw line was the best in a game in which they made at least 10 free throws since Tech went perfect from the line (11-of-11) against Arkansas-Monticello in February 2020.
Individually, the Wonder Boys had five players score in double figures.
Tommy Kamarad led the way with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting overall (4-of-6 from three-point range). He also added five rebounds, one assist and one steal.
Behind Kamarad in scoring was
Andre Leavell with 12 points. A trio of Wonder Boys were just off that as
Taelon Peter,
Wes Harris and
DeShawn Davidson all scored 10 points each.
The Wonder Boys will now prepare to hit the road this week as they are slated to travel to Oklahoma to take on Southwestern Oklahoma and Northwestern Oklahoma. The game against SWOSU is scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. tip-off on Thursday night and the game at NWOSU is scheduled for a 3 p.m. tip-off on Saturday.
