"It wasn't pretty but we aren't either," said Stephen F. Austin head coach Kyle Keller in the moments following the Lumberjacks' gutty first road win of the year. "We can't be."
It was the kind of gritty, physical game that has come to define the basketball rivalry between SFA and the Islanders of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The final result was almost as ugly as senior point guard Dallas Cameron's face after diving for a loose ball (and bizarrely being called for a foul) in the second half:
Despite the lopsided victory SFA had in the home edition of the season series, you just knew this would be a battle.
What we didn't know was that the Islanders would put up this kind of a fight without their (and possibly the conference's) best player in Rashawn Thomas. The senior forward was suspended indefinitely for unknown reasons prior to the game and it was a shock to everyone, including SFA. "Our guys let down when he didn't play," Keller would tell me later.
Nevertheless, with just a day between games, here are some things we learned in Corpus Christi on Thursday evening:
The NCAA can shove its "Officiating points of emphasis." These travel calls hurt college basketball -
Basketball purists, please do not @ me. This is starting to become a joke. The NCAA has, in an effort to reign in travel habits around the country, made strict enforcement of the rule a point of emphasis this season. The intention was to hone in on it in the non-conference season, give teams a chance to adjust, and hopefully have an improved product by league play.
Hah. If you watched the travel-fest last night, you know the product hasn't improved at all. Why? Because these aren't real travels. Most of these are just a casualty of shifting weight on the pivot foot; something that is pretty difficult to just not do. There are a bunch of examples from the game last night, but this is probably the best - in 2017 college basketball, that tiny slide while rotating on the pivot foot is a travel:
Last night was a terribly officiated game but that's essentially the norm around the Southland Conference. This is not an example of that - it was the right call, given NCAA standards now.
It doesn't make it any less frustrating to watch. The constant stoppages, particularly in a defensive game like last night, make the product very difficult to consume. The NCAA should be far more concerned with the ridiculous misses like this gem earlier in January when Kansas hit a game-winner to knock off Kansas State:
Don't entirely equate the offensive issues last night with earlier road struggles -
The inability to score points has been a pretty common theme throughout the road trips SFA has taken this season. Losses to bad teams like Tulsa, McNeese, ACU, even ULM, have all been easily traceable to dysfunctional offense.
Despite the low scoring output, the long scoring droughts, and the general ugliness by which this game was played, let's not quite throw this one in with the rest.
First of all, the ball movement remains superior to what this team could muster as recently as two weeks ago. 12 assists may not seem like a lot but only when Ivan Canete's outside shooting went full Ivan Canete in the early season game at ULM has SFA dished more on the road. The shooting woes of the last couple months? SFA's 50% from the floor was actually higher than the 46% they shot during the blowout win in Nacogdoches over the same team last week.
I'm not here to pretend that last night was a showcase of competent offense. Clearly, it was not. A team out-rebounded 51-29 evened that battle just a week later (and without their best big) with a 24-24 rebounding tie. Even with the lousy travel calls, 23 turnovers is unacceptable.
If you're looking for progress though, as if a road win (finally) isn't enough, look a little deeper than the surface and even in the midst of ugliness it isn't hard to find.
Give credit where it's due. A&M-CC has a lot of heart and excellent coaching -
Willis
Wilson has been frequently overlooked because of just how dominant SFA
has been the past few years. The job he's done at Texas A&M-Corpus
Christi is quite remarkable, though.
In 2011, the long-time coach at
Rice took over an Islanders program headed quickly in the wrong
direction and won 6 games his first year. He won another 6
games his second year.
Then 18, 20, and 25.
A program he built
practically out of nothing has become a fine representative of Southland Conference
basketball the last few seasons even if SFA has kept them out of the
NCAA Tournament. Willis' fine coaching work was certainly on full display last night.
Already with probably the worst depth in the conference
and missing easily their best player, a sorely undermanned Islanders
team went toe-to-toe with a hot SFA squad and played well enough (well,
less poorly enough) to win.
After one of the best defensive halves
an SFA team has had in years, holding the Islanders to 16 first-half
points (yes, you saw that correctly), adjustments were made by both
teams. Willis' team managed to score 42 points in the second half and
almost turn another embarrassing game against SFA into a win. On the
other side of the ball, they forced turnovers, played tough defense and
made it difficult for the Lumberjacks to find any offensive rhythm.
Long
story short: it's easy to attribute SFA's ugly offense to playing on the
road. After all, that's what it looks like every time they play away
from Nacogdoches it seems. There's more to this story, though.
This wasn't all self-inflicted. Give the Islanders credit because they had a lot to do with it.
And while you're at it, give Kyle Keller and company plenty of credit too: they won anyway.
Experience matters on the road -
SFA has some very talented freshmen on their current roster. There will be even more a year from now. During the dirty, gritty games like last night, though, sometimes experience really matters more than talent. Look at the most clutch moments of the game and who was responsible:
First, there was Dallas Cameron, the only senior on the team, just minutes after wiping gushing blood from his face, stopped a big A&M-CC run by hitting this mega three-pointer with no help and an expiring shot clock:
It was a pretty similar story a few minutes later. The Islanders capped off another run with a 3-pointer, erasing a 10-point second half lead for SFA and charging in front for the first time since the opening minutes of the game.
It would last a total of 12-seconds. With the crowd at its loudest volume of the night and all the momentum belonging to the home team, SFA's two most experienced players, Dallas Cameron and Ty Charles hooked up for this ice cold dime and bucket to issue the silence order:
He may be a new face for SFA fans, but Ivan Canete, the junior transfer, has been playing like a veteran too. We can't talk about clutch plays without the game-saving steal in the final 20-seconds of this battle. Ivan and Leon Gilmore, another junior transfer, really both earn some credit for this play.
And what a huge play it was:
In crunch time, the combination these three or four players have been the difference. Without any one of the above three plays, SFA probably doesn't win last night and the entire narrative changes. Players who excel in the big moments, when momentum and crowd are against them, may or may not be the most talented.
They're almost always the most experienced. As much as SFA has lacked veteran play this season, we should make sure we appreciate the times they haven't.
Yes, A&M-CC was missing Thomas. But SFA was missing Holyfield -
I disagree with those who say TJ Holyfield lacks passion. He has been known to out-work just about everyone. Still, the disappearing act he pulled last night is hard to diagnose.
Just days after his best offensive half of the season in the final 20 minutes of a win over Nicholls, TJ Holyfield fouled out with 6:20 left in the game with 0 points, 1 rebound, and 1 block. That in a game without Thomas, his opponent's only athletic equal.
There really isn't much to say. The passive offense and reckless defense that has haunted TJ at times this year returned in full force last night. SFA survived without him but that won't happen many times on the road if it continues.
I have no doubt that Holyfield will become a great player in Nacogdoches before all is said and done. SFA needs him to be great right now, though. The flashes of brilliance he's shown all season aren't enough.
Pay special attention to #22 on Saturday. Holyfield needs to come out with a chip on his shoulder and a mission to carry his teammates the way they did him on Thursday.
