ARLINGTON – The UT Arlington men's basketball team (4-7) closed out an otherwise extremely challenging non-conference schedule on Wednesday night with a 95-46 win over Howard Payne (3-9) inside the College Park Center.
 
Shemar Wilson led a quintet of UTA double-figure scorers with 14 off the bench. He was joined by Brandyn Talbot – who tied a career high with 13 – and Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu, Nicolas Elame and Patrick Mwamba, who set a season high, with 12 each.
 
UTA put the game out of reach immediately as the Mavs used a 22-0 run in the game's first 10 minutes to open up a 27-1 lead. The advantage swelled to 30, 34-4, at the 8:30 mark on a Javon Levi jumper, and reached 40, 44-4, with just under six minutes left following the first-ever made 3-pointer from Lazaro Rojas.
 
The Mavs finished the night shooting 57 percent (38-67) from the floor while holding Howard Payne to just 24 percent (16-68) as they had a lead as large as 52 at one point.
 
Making the performance even more impressive is that UTA was without its top-2 leading scorers in David Azore (non-COVID illness) and Pedro Castro (back surgery – out for the season).
 
BOX SCORE NUGGETS

• Levi scored six points, passed out eight assists and grabbed five rebounds.
• Akobundu-Ehiogu secured six rebounds, Rojas had seven, Mwamba collected eight and Wilson matched him on the glass for the team lead as UTA out-rebounded the Yellow Jackets, 53-30.
• Jack Hoiberg and Montez Young Jr. both finished with eight points. Young Jr. corralled six rebounds, while Hoiberg passed out four assists.
• Rojas tallied six points – and all six came on his first two career 3-pointers. He entered the game 0-7 in his career on 3-pointers.
• Akobundu-Ehiogu – the nation's active career leader in blocks per game – had two more on Wednesday, extending his streak with at least one rejection to a nation-leading 26th-straight outing dating back to last year. In 24 of those games, he has had 2+ rejections.
• The Mavs used their eighth different starting lineup of the season with Levi, Elame, Carson Bischoff, Mwamba and Akobundu-Ehiogu getting the nod.

GAME FLOW
The aforementioned 40-point UTA lead in the late stages of the 1st half eventually ballooned to as much as 45 on three different occasions to close out the opening 20 minutes, including the intermission margin of 59-14. UTA shot 52 percent (22-42) from the floor in the 1st half while holding HPU to just 13 percent (4-32).
 
UTA's lead grew to 50 for the first time at 67-17 off a Akobundu-Ehiogu layup just over three minutes into the 2nd half. However, the Yellow Jackets equaled their 1st-half point total in the first eight minutes of the 2nd half and were only out-scored by four in the 2nd half by the Mavs, who shot 64 percent (16-25) in the closing stanza.
 
QUOTABLES
"It was a fun game tonight for our players. We haven't really had a game yet this year that we could work on some things and play some different lineups. It was good for us and came at the right time just before Christmas.
 
With Pedro and David being out, it gave a chance for some other guys to get some minutes, and minutes and game reps are important and different than practice reps. The world we live in right now with COVID, we don't know what players we're going to have week-to-week, so having guys play some different positions was important.
 
And I thought our guys, for the most part, handled it terrifically. Those are hard games to play – you know you're going to win after the first five minutes – but how we played and getting guys some reps at different positions was key."
 
– UTA Head Coach Greg Young



THIS AND THAT

• This was the second-straight year the two teams played on Dec. 22.
• Talbot became the 10th different UTA player to reach double-figure points in a game this year.
• Howard Payne was UTA's first-ever road opponent (its third-ever game overall) as the Mavs faced off with the Yellow Jackets in Brownwood, Texas, on Dec. 5, 1959; HPU claimed a 71-69 win.
• UTA now leads the all-time series, 5-1.
• Young was a four-year men's basketball letterwinner at Howard Payne, graduating with a degree in physical education in 1986. He was the team captain as a senior, and received the distinguished Paul J. Cunningham Award for excellence and dedication that same year.
• The game was an exhibition contest for the Division-III Yellow Jackets, but all stats and the result for UTA were official.
• HPU is a member of the American Southwest Conference, and was the second ASC foe for UTA so far this year (Mary Hardin-Baylor).

NEXT UP
UTA will open Sun Belt Conference play at home against South Alabama on Thursday, Dec. 30, at 7 p.m.
 
FOLLOW ALONG
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