“I’m really proud of our guys,” coach Rand Chappell said. “When you hold Harding to just 55 points and 32.7 percent shooting – that’s a pretty good defensive effort.”

Coming into the game the Bisons were averaging 77.6 points per game and were shooting just less than 45 percent.

But the Bears didn’t get it done only on the defensive end. In every game of the current win streak UCA has had balanced scoring. Monday night was no different as four Bears finished with double figures.

“We realized that in the first half [of the season] we had only one or two guys scoring for us,” said Aubrey Bruner, who came off the bench to score 14 points. “Teams started scouting us and seeing that, so we’ve all stepped up and started to contribute. I truly think that if we get three or four guys in double digits we can win 80 to 90 percent of our games.”

LeMar Phillips led UCA with 15 points. Chad Wise came off the bench to score 13 and Darryl Jones pitched in 12 of his own points.

“Obviously a lot of people contributed,” Chappell said. “I think that shows that we were able to get a lot of people involved. And when you get 14 points from Aubrey and 13 from Chad off the bench that really helps.”

Stephin Booth had been a big role player off the bench, but was held scoreless Monday, but grabbed 6 rebounds for the Bears. Fernando Johnson led the Bears with 9 rebounds.

The Bears led by 11 at the half and came out sort of sluggish in the second. Their first field goal came with 15:11 left in the game when Bruner hit a three. The Bisons were able to slice the lead to five, 46-41 with 11:28 left to go.

That’s as close as the Bisons would get as the Bears went on a 15-5 run over the next five minutes to pull out to a 61-46 advantage.

Scoring was sparse the rest of the way as Harding hit just two more 3s, a free throw and a field goal – their last coming with 2:13 to go.

Bruner scored 7 points in the last 3:42. Phillips and Joey Cortez added four free throws to wrap up the scoring for the Bears.

UCA closed out one of the better first halves of the GSC season on a 13-3 run to take a 36-25 lead into the locker room.

The half ended with three free throws from Chad Wise. Wise snuck in and took the ball from Harding center Alassane Savadogo, Savadogo didn’t take kindly to the theft and hammered Wise. After the personal foul some jawing between Wise and Savadogo ensued and Savadogo was charged a technical foul. Wise hit one of two technical shots and hit both free throws for the personal foul. Wise ended the half with 8 points.

Reggie Bibb led the Bisons in scoring with 12 points, Patrick Andrepont added 10.
The Bears’ win streak will be put to the test tomorrow night as they travel to beautiful Cleveland, Miss. to take on No. 9 Delta State. The Statesmen are on an 18-game win streak and haven’t lost a GSC game yet.

“To be a factor in the conference tournament we’re going to have to step up and beat a team like Delta,” Chappell said. “It’s probably going to take an ‘A’ game, anything less won’t be good enough.”
The Bears had Delta down by 10 in the second half of the teams’ first meeting on Jan. 19, but Delta went on a 22-4 run to snag victory out of the Bears’ grasp.

“We’ve got lots of momentum right now,” Bruner said. “I really feel like our team’s hungry right now. We feel like we should have beat them the first time around and we’re looking to get us a big win.”

UCA 57, Henderson State 45
ARKADELPHIA — UCA found itself with a three-game win streak and its biggest win of the Gulf South season at the end of last Thursday’s battle with Henderson State.

The Bears picked up the 12-point win, 57-45, over a scrappy Henderson (10-11, 6-6) team that’s fighting for position in the GSC West.

Coming into the game, the teams were No. 1 and No. 2 in scoring defense and it showed in the low-scoring physical matchup.

UCA shot 47.8 percent in the second half and 40 percent from beyond the arc in outscoring the Reddies 33-25. They held HSU to 8-for-22 shooting in the half and 0-for-6 shooting from the 3-point line.

HSU scored its final bucked with two minutes to go after a Kelvin Brown free throw to cut the Bears’ lead to 49-45. But from there the Bears shut down the Reddies and scored one more layup before Henderson was forced to foul the rest of the way.

The Bears took the lead for good with 6:30 to go when Johnson converted a pair of free throws and put UCA up 43-40.

The first half was close most of the way, at least after the first two minutes of play. Henderson actually stormed out to a 7-0 lead and held on to it until the Bears finally scored with 16:47 left in the half.
UCA tied the game with 11:39 left when Stephin Booth hit a jumper in the lane to make the score 11 all. After more traded buckets, the Bears grabbed their first lead with 6:52 left on a Fred Campbell layup that gave UCA the 16-15 lead.

The Bears led the rest of the half and by as much as six, before Henderson cut the UCA lead to 24-20 to end the half.

Senior center Alexi Korolev provided a lift for the Bears, with 7 points. Korolev came into the game averaging just 1.6 points per contest. The Bears found balanced scoring with Phillips leading the way with 13, Cortez had 11 and Booth had 10. Campbell and Jones both added 6.

Henderson did not have the same luck in finding that balanced scroing. Brown led with 17 points, Demontrian Drake had 10 and Donald Austin poured in 7. No one else made a huge impact for the Reddies.