By Joel Weckerly, Sports Editor
A thin line exists between improbable and impossible, and the men’s basketball team is toeing it.
A fifth-place Lone Star Conference South standing (2-6) and a three-game losing streak haven’t helped the Wildcats any, but technically speaking, nothing is set in stone just yet.
“I don’t know if I’d say impossible,” senior forward Tucker Pierson said Wednesday. “I’m not gonna lie; it doesn’t look good for us, but at the same time there’s a lot of weird things that could happen ahead of us in our division. We just have to worry about winning that next game.”
That will be Saturday at Wichita Falls when ACU takes on third-place Midwestern State, which claims a 4-4 LSC South record to go with its 14-9 overall standing.
In their last meeting Jan. 22, the Wildcats and Indians went to overtime at Moody Coliseum, with MSU eventually winning 82-78.
“We’re pretty confident going to play them,” Pierson said. “We’ve felt like we can win all these games from the start; it’s just a matter of putting it all together.”
Pierson, who is second in team scoring with 13.4 points a game and first in rebounds with 9.3, said the conference losses have irked the players because they have been the result of short stretches of poor shooting.
“We’re really frustrated because we’re right there and then we play bad for four minutes,” he said. “We’re disappointed but we’re not quitting. We haven’t turned it in yet.”
MSU’s leading scorer is guard Marquette Wilkins, who averages 15.9 points per game to go with a team-high 4.5 assists per game. Forward Justin James is the team’s leading rebounder, with 6.4 a game.
Saturday’s game begins at 8 p.m. in Wichita Falls.