MOBILE, Ala. – The Texas State men's basketball team (23-7, 12-5 Sun Belt) had no answer for the South Alabama Jaguars (14-15, 7-9 Sun Belt) hot shooting as they fell 77-63 at the Mitchell Center. The Jaguars took control of the game with a 27-3 run across both halves to knock off the Bobcats on their senior night.
 
"I don't understand why we didn't come out with the fire in our belly that I expected them to have," said head coach Danny Kaspar. "We played a decent first half, but our defense was not there today. South Alabama played harder than we did."
 
Senior forward Alex Peacock set a new season-high with 20 points and led the Bobcats in rebounding for the 10th time this year with six boards. Senior guard Tre'Larenz Nottingham finished with 16 points in roughly 30 minutes while junior guard Jaylen Shead rounded out the double-digit scorers with 10 points and recorded seven assists. Overall, the Bobcats shot 44.6 percent (25-of-56) from the field but shot 20 percent (5-of-20) from 3-point range in the loss.
 
Junior Josh Ajayi led the Jags with 20 points on 8-of-9 shooting from the floor and tallied two steals. Senior Rodrick Sikes was right behind him with 18 points with 15 of those points coming from behind-the-arc, while graduate Kory Holden and junior guard Herb McGee both turned in 15 points. USA's 63 percent shooting (27-of-43) and 59 percent clip from deep (10-of-17) was by far the best shooting clinic of any TXST opponent this season.
 
Neither team could find a rhythm or gain an advantage for the majority of the first half that featured six ties and 13 lead changes. The Jaguars got hot in the final three minutes, however, and ended the half on a 7-0 run with Holden scoring five of those points alone. Despite shooting 70 percent from the floor (14-of-20) and 50 percent from three (4-of-8), South Alabama went into halftime with just a four-point, 35-31 lead over the Bobcats.
 
Texas State struggled out of the break and South Alabama continued to click on all cylinders as they opened the second half with a 14-0 run to extend their lead to 49-31. The shooting woes dragged on for the Bobcats until Shead scored the first field goal for the visiting team at the 12:32 mark, ending the 20-3 Jag attack. Shead's bucket ignited a Bobcat 9-2 run, but the Jaguars ripped off another 14-6 stretch, giving them a 71-49 lead, the largest of the night. The Bobcats put together a pair of sporadic runs of 8-0 and 6-0, respectively, to get the deficit down to 10 points but it was too late as USA put them away by shooting 4-of-4 from the charity stripe in garbage time to secure the victory.
 
"I am disappointed in how we performed with so much on the line," Kaspar noted. "The guys know what is at stake. We have to be mature about what is on the line and follow our system. A system that has got us to a 12-5 conference record which means we have to defend the basketball. They [South Alabama] shot 63 percent today on us. We can't win games letting opponents shoot 63 percent. We did not look like the Texas State team that won 23 games. This was our most disappointing defeat of the year and with so much at stake, I am very frustrated with our effort and the outcome of the game."   
 
Texas State will end the regular season on March 9 at UT Arlington. With a win, the Bobcats can still claim a share of the league's regular season championship title.
 
INSIDE THE BOX SCORE
 
• Texas State' Jaylen Shead logged his 14th game this season with five or more assists and his seventh with seven or more helpers.
• The Bobcats outscored the Jaguars 36-32 in the paint and dominated them in bench scoring 14-1.
• TXST outrebounded USA 28-24 in rebounds, including a 14-6 margin on the offensive glass. The Bobcats dropped their fifth game this season (19-5) and third game in conference (10-3) when outrebounding their opponent.
• USA's Rodrick Sikes matched TXST with five made 3-point field goals.
• Junior guard Nijal Pearson scored one point and was 0-of-8 from the floor. In 30 game played this year, Pearson has been held under 10 points five times and none under six points prior to this game.
 
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