MONTICELLO, Ark. – The Arkansas Tech men's basketball team began Great American Conference play on Thursday night on the road at Arkansas-Monticello and were successfully able to hold off a late UAM surge to secure an 87-81 victory.
After the very early moments of the game were closely-contested, the Wonder Boys took control of the game as they got hot from three-point range. Over a stretch of about 1:44 of game time, the Wonder Boys buried a trio of trifectas to give them a nine-point lead by the 15:10 mark of the first half.
The first of those makes from distance came from
BJ Johnson while the last two were cashed in by
Taelon Peter, who would go on to match his career-high in scoring by night's end with a 33-point effort.
From there, the Wonder Boys were able to maintain a relatively comfortable lead and ended the first half up by a half a dozen, 38-32. The comfortable lead continued throughout the second half as the Wonder Boys' lead bounced around anywhere from five points to a much 12 points.
Leading by five points with just under four minutes left to play, the Wonder Boys ripped off a quick 5-0 run to double their lead out to double-digits, 73-63. During that run, Tech got a painted jumper by
Sean Cobb and an old-fashioned three-point play from
Tommy Kamarad.
A split trip to the free throw line seconds later by Cobb gave Tech an 11-point lead with 2:53 left on the clock.
Over the course of the next two minutes of game time, however, the Boll Weevils would climb all the way back and got as close as two points of the Tech lead 37 seconds left thanks to a 14-5 run. A major factor in the late run for UAM was successes from beyond the arc as they made all three of their attempts from range.
After the final three went through the net for UAM at the 37-second mark, the game came down to the free throw line for both teams.
The Wonder Boys would split their next four attempts from the charity stripe while UAM made good on both of their tries. That kept it a two-point Tech lead with just 25 seconds left.
With the shot clock off, the Boll Weevils had possession and a chance to hold out for the last shot, but ended up taking a jumper around the 18-second mark. The shot attempt was off the iron, but the rebound was not able to be controlled and was last touched by the Wonder Boys to keep possession with UAM.
The game changed at this moment as UAM had the ball on the baseline at their end of the court with now 16 seconds left. With obviously a crucial in-bounds play coming, the Wonder Boys defended well enough to elongate the entry pass enough to where the Boll Weevil in-bounder elected to call timeout before being whistled for a 5-second turnover.
The only issue was, the Boll Weevils were out of timeouts, and ala Chris Webber's similar timeout call in the 1993 NCAA Championship game against North Carolina, a technical was assessed to UAM and the Wonder Boys went to the line on the other end for two critically important free throw attempts.
With the technical, the Wonder Boys were allowed to select their shooter and opted for Peter. Already 4-for-4 from the line, Peter buried the two technical foul shots to double the Tech lead out to four points, 83-79, with 16 seconds left.
Before the final horn sounded, Peter would get four more attempts at the free throw line, and he was money on all four as he pushed the final margin of victory out to six points for the Wonder Boys.
Peter's late run of success at the charity stripe swelled his scoring in the game to 33, which as mentioned previously tied his single-game high. In addition to his team-high 33 points, Peter also led the team in the rebounds with eight.
Four other Wonder Boys would reach double-figures in scoring for Tech.
Cassius Brooks was next behind Peter with 16 points. Johnson and
Sean Cobb followed with 11 points each while
Kade Shaffer added 10 points.
The Wonder Boys will now prepare to play their first conference game at home this coming Saturday as they play host to Ouachita Baptist. Tip-off is scheduled for 3 p.m. from Tucker Coliseum.
