ARLINGTON, Texas – UT Arlington men's basketball (13-6, 5-2 WAC) avenged its lone home loss of the season when they knocked off Tarleton State (11-9, 2-5 WAC) 71-64 on Wednesday night at the College Park Center. The Mavs scored 51 points in the second half after mustering just 20 in the opening period. At 5-2, the Mavs are now tied for the top spot in the WAC.
Senior forward
Raysean Seamster scored 20 of his 23 points in the second half, and also pulled down eight rebounds in the win. UTA had two more in double figures, as sophomore guard
Cash Chavis scored 13 and dished out seven assists and sophomore guard
Tyran Mason scored 10 on 4-of-5 from the floor.
"I want to tip my hat to Tarleton," head coach
KT Turner said in his postgame press conference. "I really felt their desperation, I knew they had lost a couple and knew these guys were going to come in here and really fight, scrap and claw and they did that. I felt that a lot more from them in the first half, a lot more than we did, so I want to tip my hat to those guys.
"I felt like offensively we turned the ball over way too much in the first half and that really hurt us from scoring some points. But once we stopped turning it over, I felt like we could score. I feel like we could have rebounded the basketball better. We've got a lot of work to do – we've got to get better and we have a lot to work on."
The first half was a defensive struggle that saw a simultaneous scoreless stretch of four-plus minutes, and despite not hitting a field goal for the final 7:57 of the opening half, Tarleton State took a four-point lead into the locker room, 24-20.
The nation's leading scorer Dior Johnson, who scored just two points in the first meeting back on Dec. 29, was held in check from the field in the first half, hitting just 1-of-8 from the floor, but was a perfect 8-for-8 at the line to give him a team-high 10 at the break. He finished with 16 on 4-of-14 shooting on the night and is averaging just 9.0 ppg in two games against the Mavs this season.
UTA was just 9-of-24 from the field (37.5%) in the opening stanza and the 20 points in the first half was the team's second-lowest total of the season. UTA was held to 19 points in the opening half at New Mexico on Nov. 8.
The Mavs came out of halftime on a roll, opening with an 8-0 run to flip a four-point deficit into a four-point lead. They held Tarleton State without a field goal for 11:55 of game time all the way to the 16:02 mark of the second half.
Mason knocked down a triple to put the Mavs up 47-38, but Tarleton State wouldn't go away. They used a 7-1 run to cut the lead to 48-45, and ultimately tied the game on multiple occasions.
With the game tied at 54, it was sophomore guard
Bahsil Laster who buried a three-pointer to break the tie. After Seamster hit a pair at the line, it was Laster who hit two more free throws to lift the Mavs to a 61-56. The Texans got no closer than five, and the Mavericks held on for the 71-64 win.
UTA has now equaled its win total from a year ago (13) and it's the fastest to 13 wins since the 2017-18 season, when the Mavs won their 13
th on Jan. 20. That team finished with 21 wins and ultimately fell in the Sun Belt title game. The 2016-17 team won No. 13 on Jan. 16, and ended up winning the Sun Belt regular season crown, finishing 27-9.
The Mavs have eight days off, but remain at home and will host Southern Utah (7-13, 3-4 WAC) on Thursday, Jan. 29. That game tips off at 7 p.m. CT and will be broadcast live on
ESPN+, and on the radio on the Varsity Network App with the Voice of the Mavs, Josh Sours. Southern Utah knocked off Utah Valley 84-70 at home Wednesday night and takes on Utah Tech on the road this Saturday before traveling to Arlington.
-- #BuckEm –
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