By Joel Weckerly, Sports Editor
The only thing worse than losing five games is losing them by an average of 6.8 points, and the men’s basketball team knows this well. Since jumping out to a 4-0 start through the end of November, the Wildcats had gone 4-5 through Wednesday, two of the losses coming with a margin of two and four points.
“It’s almost worse than getting blown out,” senior forward Tucker Pierson said of the tight losses. “Most of our losses were close in the end and we feel like we should have won them.”
Possibly the toughest loss for the Cats to take came on Dec. 30 at Division I opponent Texas State-San Marcos. ACU cut Texas State’s lead to 66-65 with 2:07 left to play, but the Bobcats were able to pull away in the final two minutes to win 77-70.
“That was a good team we played in Texas State and we were definitely in a position to win that game,” head coach Klint Pleasant said. “We could easily be 10-3 right now, but this is a funny game. If you go back to all the games we lost, our shots just didn’t fall. We just have to be able to hit shots down the stretch, and I think we’re capable of doing that.”
ACU (8-5), a team that brought nine new players in this season, has had to make major chemistry adjustments, and halfway through the season, Pleasant said the team has done a decent job.
“Every day it’s a little better,” he said. “Any time you have this many new guys, it takes time, but this is a confident team that knows we’ve been right there in games; we just need to put it together in the final minutes.”
And while ACU’s shooting hasn’t always been consistent, it’s defense certainly has. Besides limiting opponents to 70.6 points per game this season, the Wildcats have held them to 38 percent field goal shooting and 28 percent from 3-point range. The defensive field goal percentage ranks sixth in all of Division II.
“I was very impressed with that stat,” Pleasant said. “That shows me that we’re defending well on the perimeter and that we’re pressuring a lot of shots.”
After playing host to Central Oklahoma on Thursday, ACU welcomes Lone Star Conference North opponent Northeastern State to Moody
Coliseum on Saturday. The Redmen (7-6) are last year’s Division II National Champions, al-though many of that team’s players have since graduated and left a rebuilding team.
Northeastern showed no mercy on the Wildcats in Tahlequah, Okla., last season, taking advantage of a point guard-less ACU squad and winning 88-49.
“I’m looking forward to that game,” Pierson said. “We got beat pretty bad last year. They’re a good team and they’ve proven they can win. It will be a good comparison game to let us see where we’re at.”
After this weekend, the Cats kick off their LSC South Division schedule, opening at home against Angelo State on Tuesday. Through Wednesday, the Rams were 9-3 and second place in the division. Before the divisional games start up, however, Pleasant said he wants to see improvement this weekend.
“I want us to play like a team and to be unselfish,” he said. “I’m looking forward to having the student body back behind us. I don’t know if the students realize how much that helps our team.”
