Men's Basketball 12/8/2012 3:13:00 PM

Men’s Basketball Sweeps La Posada Classic

Box Score

LAREDO, Texas (December 8) – The TAMIU men’s basketball team finished 2-0 in the 2012 La Posada Classic, taking care of Arlington Baptist College 77-67 Saturday afternoon at the TAMIU KCB.

After outscoring the Patriots by 59 points Friday night, Arlington Baptist played a much better game Saturday afternoon trailing at one point by only five points.

“They played a lot harder than they did yesterday and it’s hard to get up for a team once you beat them the way we did the previous day,” said Junior forward Jordan Clark. “We didn’t bring our A-game today and we let our intensity slip a little bit. We didn’t play defense like coach taught us and at the end of the day, defense is what’s going get us over the top. We can score over anybody but we need to play better defense moving forward.”

Four Dustdevils scored in double figures led by senior Jayvin Reynolds who finished with a season-high 15 points on 6-7 shooting with three rebounds. A day after scoring 24 points, Jordan Clark was held to 12 after getting into early foul trouble. Felipe Vezaro and Damal Donaldson combined for 21 points with Vezaro adding six rebounds, five assists, and three steals and Donaldson grabbing a game-high 8 boards. The Dustdevils shot 55.2 percent as a team from the floor and 25.0 percent from beyond the arc.

Arlington Baptist was paced by Jeremiah Ford who scored a game-high 17 points, followed by Raphael Garcia and Rod Reed who kicked in 16 and 14 respectively.

TAMIU jumped out to an early 9-3 lead in the first half, but Carlton Pride converted a three-point play with 12:44 remaining to cut the Dustdevils’ advantage down to three-points. The Dustdevils began to assert themselves inside over the next few minutes, using a 13-2 to extend their lead out to 33-19. TAMIU would lead by as many as 15 in the final, before Rod Reed connected on a three-pointer in the waning minutes sending the Dustdevils into the break with a 48-39 advantage.

The Patriots came storming back to open the second half going on an 11-5 run to pull within five points. TAMIU responded with a 9-1 run of their own capped by a Jordan Clark dunk to push the lead back out to 68-55. The visitors hit back-to-back buckets to pull with eight points, but that’s as close as they would get as the Dustdevils finished strong taking the 77-67 win.

The win gives the Dustdevils a 5-3 overall record on the season as they prepare for a rematch with Lone Star Conference opponent Incarnate Word on December 19. In their first meeting this season the Cardinals took a slim 72-68 win over TAMIU in Laredo. The Dustdevils and Cardinals will meet in San Antonio at 7 p.m. at the McDermott Center.

Print Friendly Version