STATESBORO, Ga. – Seeking its fifth-straight win overall and a 4-0 Sun Belt Conference start, the UT Arlington men's basketball team (7-7, 3-0 SBC) faces Georgia Southern (7-6, 0-2 SBC) on Saturday, Jan. 8, at 2 p.m. Central (3 Eastern).
 

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Game Notes: UT Arlington  ///  Georgia Southern

 
THE OPENING TIP(s)

• UTA will be looking to match its best-ever start to a Sun Belt season at 4-0. The Mavs also commenced the 2015-16 campaign 4-0 – the only other time they have even been 3-0 in league play.

• The Mavs will also be in search of their first five-game winning streak since a pair of five-game runs in 2018-19; the second of those runs came to an end in the 2019 Sun Belt Championship Final to Georgia State.

• UTA pulled down 51 boards in out-rebounding Georgia State on Thursday, 51-32. That's the most caroms for the Mavs versus a Division-I opponent since 55 against Troy on Mar. 5, 2016. Additionally, 18 of those came on the offensive glass – UTA's most against any D-I team in more than a decade.

TWEETABLES
1) Reigning Sun Belt Player of the Week David Azore has led UTA in scoring in six-straight games in which he's played (DNP versus Howard Payne on Dec. 22 due to a non-COVID illness). The last time someone other than Azore led UTA in scoring was Pedro Castro with 17 at UC Santa Barbara on Nov. 29.
 
2) Javon Levi needs just six points to reach 1,000 for his career. The UTRGV grad transfer scored 918 points in four seasons with the Vaqueros. He would be the second UTA player to reach the milestone in six games (Azore at Oklahoma on Dec. 19).
 
3) UTA was without Jack Hoiberg (4.5 ppg) and Carson Bischoff (3.9 ppg) at Georgia State due to COVID protocols, and those two also will not play against Georgia Southern.
 
4) The Mavs won on Thursday for the first time this year (now 1-7) when trailing at the half as Georgia State held a 32-31 lead at intermission.
 
5) Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu – the country's active leader in career blocked shots per game (3.16) – ranks 18th in the nation this year with 2.9 blocks per outing. He had his nation-best streak of a block in 28-straight games snapped on GSU on Thursday night.
 
ABOUT THE MATCHUP

• Georgia Southern had its game on Thursday against Texas State canceled due to COVID protocols within the Bobcats' program. The Eagles opened league play last weekend with 78-66 and 74-56 losses at Little Rock and Arkansas State, respectively.
   
• The Eagles lead the Sun Belt and rank 15th in the nation in field goal percentage at 49.2. They also rank 32nd in the country in steals per game (9.2) and 49th in turnovers forced per contest (16). This will be the third-straight opponent for UTA which ranks in the top-50 nationally in turnovers forced, and the Mavs have done an exquisite job of taking care of the ball against the first two: Troy (17.4 turnovers forced / UTA committed five) and Georgia State (18.2 / 12).

• According to KenPom, Georgia Southern receives 59.8 percent of its total points on the year from two-point shots to rank 14th nationally, while UTA has gotten 57.8 percent of its total points from two-point shots to rank 31st in the country. The Eagles are shooting 53 percent on two-point shots, while the Mavs are holding opponents to just 44 percent on two-point shots – the 29th-best rate in the nation.

• Elijah McCadden leads the Eagles with 11.9 points per game, while Andrei Savrasov is right behind at 11.8. Kamari Brown rounds out a trio of double-figure scorers for Georgia Southern at 10.2. Savrasov paces GS with 6.2 rebounds per outing.

AZORE NAMED PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Azore scored 30 points in an 89-87 UTA overtime victory against South Alabama last Thursday, and followed it up with 24 points in a come-from-behind 62-57 triumph against Troy on Saturday. The 30 points opposite the Jaguars represented a season high for the Houston native, were three off equaling his career best and were tied for the 2nd-most by a Sun Belt player in any game this year versus a D-I opponent. The 6-4 guard also secured a team-high-tying seven rebounds and passed out three assists against USA as the Mavs led for all but six minutes.
 
Fast forward two days, and UTA trailed Troy, 57-54, with under two minutes remaining. However, Azore scored seven of the Mavs' final eight points – including the game-tying and go-ahead points – in the closing 100 seconds to propel them near single-handedly to a win. He again grabbed a team-best seven rebounds and issued two assists in helping UTA cap the game with a 10-0 scoring run.
 
For the two games, Azore shot 54 percent from the floor (20-37), 93 percent from the free throw line (13-14) and averaged 37 minutes per contest.
 
Azore is, incredibly, the first Maverick to win SBC Player of the Week since Brian Warren on Feb. 4, 2019. Warren was named Co-Player that week, meaning Azore is the first outright winner of the weekly award in the league since Erick Neal on Feb. 26, 2018.
 
NON-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE STRENGTH
UTA played the hardest non-conference schedule of any Sun Belt team (22nd-toughest in the nation). The Mavs faced five Quad 1 opponents; only one other team in the league played even four (ULM) as UTA was responsible for 20 percent of the Sun Belt's 25 combined Quad 1 games. In fact, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, South Alabama, Little Rock, Troy and Coastal Carolina (six teams; half the league) combined for just four Quad 1 games – one fewer than UTA on its own.
 
KEY NUMBERS
2: UTA lost its then-2nd-leading scorer Pedro Castro for the season after he underwent back surgery on Dec. 18 following an injury suffered at Oral Roberts two days prior.
 
4: UTA committed just four turnovers against Troy on Jan. 1 – tied for the fewest in program history in the last 10 years (Louisiana on Jan. 31, 2020).
 
5: The victory over Troy last Saturday was UTA's first when trailing with five minutes remaining (now 1-7; trailed 53-47).
 
6: Six of UTA's seven wins this year have come when scoring in the 50s, 60s, 70, 80s, 90s or 100s.
 
7: Akobundu-Ehiogu recorded his seventh-career game of 5+ blocks last Thursday; no other player in program history has more than three such games, and Akobundu-Ehiogu has done it in just 32 contests with UTA.
 
8: UTA played the most non-conference opponents in the nation that participated in the NCAA Tournament last year with incredibly eight. Of the nine D-I foes the Mavs faced in their non-league schedule only one (Lamar) didn't play in March Madness in 2021.
 
9: UTA has already used nine-different starting lineups in 14 games – tied for the 3rd-most combinations of any team in the nation (UTEP: 12, Stony Brook: 10, four teams: 9).
 
28: Azore reached 1,000 career points with a free throw in the 1st half of UTA's contest at Oklahoma on Dec. 19, becoming the 28th member of UTA's 1,000 Point Club.
 
100: With a 62-57 win over Troy on Jan. 1, UTA claimed its 100th all-time victory in the College Park Center (100-41, .709). The first game took place on Feb. 1, 2012, with 2012-13 being the first full season of the CPC.
 
KEY KENPOM NUMBERS
14.1% – Percentage of UTA's opponent shots this season that have been blocked by the Mavs, ranking as the 27th-highest in the country.
 
41.8% – Percentage of UTA's total minutes this season which have been played by its bench (non-starters), the 18th-most of any team in the nation.

97.6 – The rating of UTA's opponent defenses so far this season, ranking the 14th-hardest schedule in the country in terms of defenses faced.
 
AMONG THE NATION'S ELITE
Javon Levi spent the previous four seasons at UTRGV, accumulating statistical numbers which place him among the best guards in the nation. Levi ranks in the top 7 among all active D-I players in the country in career assists (3rd, 668), steals (4th, 264) and assist-to-turnover ratio (7th, 2.53). Additionally, Levi ranks tied for 4th in career steals per game at 2.2.
 
MOVING ON UP
David Azore is 4th on UTA's all-time program list for made free throws with 334, and currently ranks 8th in free throw percentage at 80.1.
 
DEPTH ON DISPLAY
UTA led the nation along with Abilene Christian and Murray State last season by having 13 different players score double-figure points in a game. So far this year, the Mavs have already had 10 different double-figure scorers – tied for the 8th-most in the nation (two teams with 13; five teams with 11). Below is a list of those players, their respective season highs and how many times they have led UTA in scoring:
 
David Azore: 30 (8x)
Pedro Castro: 17 (3x)
Nicolas Elame: 17 (1x)
Patrick Mwamba: 16, 2x
Shemar Wilson: 15 (1x)
Javon Levi: 14
Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu: 14
Brandyn Talbot: 13
Montez Young Jr.: 12 (1x)
Jack Hoiberg: 11
 
RE-TWEETS

• UTA established season highs against a D-I opponent in an 89-87 overtime win against South Alabama on Dec. 30 with points (89), field goal percentage (.541) and points in a half (41, 1st). USA entered the game holding opponents to just 61 points per game – 2nd-best in the SBC and 41st nationally.
   
• Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu posted a career-high 14 points, pulled down six rebounds and blocked six shots against Lamar on Dec. 11. The six blocks are tied for the most by any Sun Belt player this year and are tied for the 5th-most in single-game program history. He went 7-7 from the floor thanks to six alley-oops – tied for the 6th-most makes without a miss in program history (minimum five makes).

• The Mavs were scheduled to face Nevada (NET #127 – Quad 3 opponent at home) on Tuesday, Dec. 7; however, that contest was canceled due to COVID protocols within the Wolf Pack program.
   
• UTA won at UC Santa Barbara on Nov. 29, 70-62, snapping the 6th-longest home winning streak in the country at 20 in a row dating back to 2019. UCSB was the last of five-straight opponents – and six-straight D-I foes for UTA – which played in the NCAA Tournament last year.
   
• UTA's win at UCSB (ranked #93 at the time by KenPom) was its first road non-conference win over a KenPom top-100 team since the Mavs took down BYU (then #73) on Nov. 18, 2018.
   
• Pedro Castro was held scoreless at Utah State, his first pointless game since he was a redshirt freshman with the Mavs (two schools in-between) on Mar. 16, 2019, in a Sun Belt Tournament semifinal win over Georgia Southern. He bounced back impressively with a team-high 16 points at UC Santa Barbara two days later.
   
• UTA shot 64.2 percent (43-67) from the floor on Nov. 13 against Mary Hardin-Baylor, which was tied for the 7th-best mark in single-game program history. It was the 2nd-highest percentage in program history when making at least 40 shots (66 percent, 40-62, at Texas Wesleyan on Jan. 2, 1965).
   
• Shemar Wilson led the way with that shooting percentage as he went a perfect 6-6 from the floor – tied for the 10th-most makes in program history without a miss.
   
• Javon Levi posted his seventh-career double-double with 12 points and 10 assists against UMHB. It was the first points-assists double-double by a UTA player since Brian Warren had 15 and 12 versus Arkansas Tech on Nov. 24, 2019.
   
• Greg Young secured his first-career win at the D-I level with the 104-75 victory over Mary Hardin-Baylor. Young – who was named the ninth head coach in program history this past spring following 12 seasons on the UTA sidelines as either an assistant (2009-13) or associate head coach (2013-21) – had previously served as a junior college head coach for 10 seasons, accumulating an overall record of 168-139. His first-career victory over a D-I opponent came on Nov. 29 at UC Santa Barbara.
   
• The Mavs had six different players reach double-figure points against Mary Hardin-Baylor. The last time UTA had exactly six in double figures was an NIT Second Round victory over Akron on Mar. 20, 2017. UTA had eight double-figure scorers in a 117-53 win opposite Howard Payne on Dec. 22, 2020.
   
• The Mavs handed out 28 assists against UMHB, one shy of cracking the top-10 single-game program record list.

NEXT UP
UTA is scheduled to return home to welcome Louisiana to the College Park Center on Thursday, Jan. 13, for what is shaping up as a massive early-season clash as the Cajuns are the only other 3-0 team in the Sun Belt. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
 
FOLLOW ALONG
For updates, behind-the-scenes photos, videos and more engaging and personal content, be sure to follow the men's basketball program on Twitter (@UTAMavsMBB), Instagram (@UTAMavsMBB) and Facebook (/UTAMavsMBB).