Colonels in sole possession of second place in SLC after home win over Islanders

A short memory could lead to a long-term gain for the Nicholls men’s basketball team.

The Colonels went into a two-game stretch last Saturday with a chance to avenge their only two Southland Conference losses in the first round of league play, plus a chance to stay within striking distance of first-place McNeese.

Things didn’t go so well on Saturday as the Colonels lost 75-56 at Lamar.

A loss on Monday night at Stopher Gym to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi would have given both the Islanders and the Cardinals tiebreakers over Nicholls by virtue of season sweeps in head-to-head competition, not to mention falling further down in the standings.

With Nicholls holding only a three-point lead at 60-57 with 49 seconds left in the game following a 3-pointer by the Corpus Christi’s Lance-Amir Paul, the game was in doubt.

Playing a bit of keep-away to run down the clock, Nicholls’ Byron Ireland finally drove to the basket. He scored and the play and was fouled. Ireland hit the free throw to put the Colonels up by six points with 23 seconds left in the game.

“We just wanted to come down and make we get a good bucket to put us up before the game was over,” Ireland said of his three-point play.

“That was a big turning point. He went up and got a hard foul and he had the concentration and made it. That put us up like a two-possession game and with the tine that was left, that kind of sealed the game,” Diante Smith said of Ireland’s effort.

“We called the play. The clock was our friend, so we took our time. He got in there. He played off of two feet. He was able to stay on his pivot foot and just go up strong and finish the layup,” Nicholls coach Tevon Saddler said.

Dayne Prim had a tip-in to make things interesting, but Smith hit two free throws and Colonels went on to a 67-63 win.

The win allowed the Colonels to get some pay-back against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi only two days after the loss at Lamar.

Last Saturday was a tough one. You’ve got to have short-term memory in this conference. You play on Saturday and have one break on Sunday, and you play again on Monday. We just gotta have short-term memory and put it behind us and keep moving forward,” said Smith.

The win by Nicholls improved the Colonels to 8-3 in the Southland, while the Islanders fell to 7-4. The result, coupled with Incarnate Word’s 76-67 upset of Lamar on Monday dropped the Cardinals from Beaumont to 7-4.

That leaves the Colonels along in second place and two games behind league-leading McNeese when the Cowboys travel to Thibodaux on Saturday. Because of a quirk in the schedule, McNeese and Nicholls still have two games to play against each other.

“We got a big week ahead of us this week. We got the number one team in the conference coming in. We just got to stick to what we do and hopefully we will come out with success,” said Smith.

Smith finished with a game-high 20 points. Rob Brown added 18 and Ireland 12.

The trio picked up the slack when the Islanders did a good job of denying Nicholls post player Jamal West from getting inside. West was held to six points but still managed a team-high eight rebounds.

“I don’t think West had the best offensive night, but he didn’t let it bother him. I thought he did a heck of a job on the defensive end. It’s like I always say, we got so many good players that it’s hard to scout against us,” Saddler said.

Owen Dease and Garry Clark each had 13 points for the Islanders. Clark led the team with eight rebounds. Dian Wright-Forde chipped in 12 points.

Nicholls took its biggest lead of the game in the second half when an 11-3 run, which included baskets in the paint by Ireland, West, and Oumar Koureissi, plus two Brown free throws and a Brown 3-pointer gave the Colonels a 57-46 lead with 6:09 remaining in the game.

In a game that featured eight lead changes and four ties in the first half, no team led by more than five points as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi took a 32-21 advantage to the locker room.

Nicholls held three-point leads several times throughout the opening half, while the Islanders were up by as many as five points when Marion Humphrey hit a free throw to give Corpus Christi a 26-21 edge at the 5:19 mark of the first half.

Immediately after Humphrey’s free throw, a tip-in by Koureissi and a 3-pointer by Smith allowed Nicholls to tie the game.

A 3-pointer by Brown gave Nicholls a 29-26 lead. The teams traded leads late in the game with a Humphrey jumper with 54 seconds remaining giving the Islanders their one-point edge at halftime.