Shooting woes sink Aggies in LSC semifinals

FRISCO, Texas—Some days the rim seems to be as wide as the Grand Canyon, on other days it doesn’t even seem big enough to let the ball go through and that in a nutshell is how Cameron’s men’s basketball season came to an end Saturday.

Thursday’s quarterfinal win over top-seeded West Texas included an amazing effort from 3-point range and some timely free throws but the Aggies didn’t fare well in either category Saturday as Eastern New Mexico pulled away late for a 91-81 victory to end the season for Kevin O’Connor’s club.

ENMU will play Lubbock Christian University this afternoon at 1 p.m. at the Comerica Center in Frisco. LCU beat Texas A&M-International, 50-40 in the other semifinal contest. That means the title game will match the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds thanks in part to Cameron’s big upset of West Texas Thursday.

While the Aggies were emotionally drained after Saturday’s tough loss, O’Connor was pleased with how well his Aggies played down the stretch this season.

“ENMU just made a few more plays down the stretch,” O’Connor said during the post-game press conference. “We don’t have any regrets. I tip our cap to them because they made the plays they needed to make late in the game. We played pretty good defense but at times we didn’t pressure the ball like we did at other times and against a team with that type of size you have to pressure the ball and try and keep them out of the lane.”

As O’Connor said after the game, his club just didn’t make shots when they needed them after knotting the game at 78-all with less than three minutes remaining in the game.

Cameron’s shooting woes included an 18-of-27 effort from the free throw line and they hit just 7-of-26 treys in the game, a 26.9 percent effort, well below their 50 percent mark in Thursday’s big upset of WT.

The Aggies got their final bucket with 3:16 remaining on a Jaylon Thomas layup but after that the Aggies went 0-for-6 down the stretch and that proved to be their downfall as the Greyhounds made a pair of layups off fast breaks, one by Jahcoree Ealy with 2:19 remaining and the other by Lyron Bennett with 1:39 remaining.

The rest of their points came on 10 straight free throws from the Greyhounds who wound up hitting 24-of-30 free throws for the game and that was clearly the difference. Another key statistic had ENMU getting 62 points in the paint while the Aggies finished with 40.

Cameron was led in scoring by reserve post Jaxon Ingram who scored 18 for the Aggies while playing in place of Andre Washington who was saddled with foul trouble. Reggie Pruhdomme and Jaylan Thomas each added 16 and Lavell Brodnex chipped in 13.

“I am sitting in there at 6-6 (height) and Conrad (Luczynski) is 7-3, so it’s tough at times to keep him out of the lane and stop him,” Ingram said. “I felt like we did a good job getting them in foul trouble; that’s why they had to rotate those guys and that’s what we wanted to do. We spread the ball and the guys got me the ball.”

O’Connor was asked about his thoughts on the upcoming NCAA South-Central Regional.

“I don’t think anyone in the region has as big a win as the one we got against West Texas,” the CU coach said. “Two of the teams we are competing with both lost in the first round. I am new to this performance indicator but I think if they watch the games that we passed the eye test with the win over WT.

“Whatever happens we just have to accept and move on. We have no regrets; we left it all out there on the court the last few games. We did what we needed to do in my opinion.”