RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas Tech men's basketball team moved to 2-0 early in the Great American Conference season as they picked up blowout 85-50 win over Ouachita Baptist at home on Saturday afternoon.
The 35-point margin of victory for the Wonder Boys is the largest of the season to this point and is the largest in head coach
Mark Downey's second stint at Tech. The previous highest margin for the team came in 2019 when the Wonder Boys beat Baptist Bible by 41 points, 109-68.
Early on in Saturday's game, the Wonder Boys and Tigers were matching one another blow-for-blow as the lead changed hands eight times over the first five and a half minutes. The last of those lead changes in that stretch also represented the final one for the game and was in favor of Tech.
Tommy Kamarad had the go-ahead bucket that gave Tech their final lead as he knocked down a three-pointer at the 14:37 mark of the first half. At that point, the Kamarad three-ball gave Tech a modest one-point lead, but about two minutes of game time later, the lead was out to seven thanks to dunks by Kamarad and
Taelon Peter as well as a pair of Kamarad free throws.
From there, the Wonder Boys were off to the races and built their lead out to double-digits, 25-15, at the 10:15 mark. The Tigers were able to get the deficit under double-figures on a few occasions, but never truly threatened the lead and the Wonder Boys went into the locker room with a 16-point lead, 48-32.
The second half had even more separation between the Wonder Boys and Tigers and Tech pushed their lead out to 20 points by the 15:47 mark and later to 30 points by the 4:18 mark. The Wonder Boys swelled their lead out to its apex of 35 points on a jumper by
Braden Tanner at the 2:38 mark and ended with that margin.
Overall, Tech shot 49% from the floor (33-of-67), made nine of their 24 three-point attempts (38%) and missed only two of their 12 free throw attempts (83%).
Leading the charge offensively was Peter as he scored a game-high 28 points on 10-of-18 shooting. He was 5-of-10 from long range and 3-of-4 from the charity stripe. Peter also added four rebounds, four steals and three assists.
Two others scored in double figures for Tech with Kamarad being second in scoring with 14 points. He was 4-of-8 overall, 2-of-4 from three and 4-of-4 from the line.
Sean Cobb was the other to reach double figures as he had 11 points on 5-of-7 shooting overall. Cobb was also second in rebounds with eight.
Josh Mitchell led the team in that category with a season-high 13 boards.
The Wonder Boys will now prepare to take a brief pause from conference play as they remain at home this coming Tuesday and will take on Central Baptist in a non-conference game. The game is scheduled for a 7 p.m. tip-off.
