PENSACOLA, Fla. – Texas State men's basketball shot its second-lowest field goal percentage of the season while Louisiana's Jordan Brown scored a career-high 31 points as the No. 1 seed Bobcats lost 79-72 to the Ragin' Cajuns in the 2022 Hercules Tires Sun Belt Conference Men's Basketball Championship quarterfinals on Saturday at the Pensacola Bay Center.
The Bobcats (21-7, 12-3 Sun Belt) finished the game shooting 35.8 percent from the field (24-of-67) and 35 percent from three (7-of-20). In the first half, Texas State was 8-of-29 shooting (27.6 percent), plagued by an eight-minute stretch in which it did not register a field goal.
The loss snapped Texas State's season-long nine-game winning streak.
Despite the exit from the Sun Belt Championship, the Bobcats will compete in the NIT for the first time in program history after receiving an auto-bid for winning the conference regular season title. They will find out their fate for the opening round of the postseason tournament on Sunday, March 13. First round of the NIT will be March 15-16.
The No. 8 seed Ragin' Cajuns (15-14, 8-9 Sun Belt) outrebounded Texas State, 45-33, and led by as much as 16 in the second half.
Brown was 12-of-20 shooting as his 31 points were the most by an opponent this season. He had 19 points in the second half.
While Louisiana only had two players in double-figures for scoring, Texas State had four, led by
Mason Harrell's 16. Fellow seniors
Caleb Asberry (15),
Isiah Small (14) and
Shelby Adams (11) joined Harrell.
Small finished with a double-double, adding 11 rebounds to his 14 points.
Adams was the only other Bobcat with more than three rebounds as he had a season-high-tying seven boards.
Entering the game as the top free-throw shooting team in the conference, Texas State finished 17-of-25 (68 percent) at the line.
The Bobcats did jump out to a 20-14 lead in the first 12 minutes of the game, but until a last-second make by Nighael Ceasar to end the first half, Texas State went 8:27 without a field goal. The Bobcats missed eight attempts over the stretch.
Louisiana, meanwhile, used the cold streak and went on a 17-3 run to open an eight-point lead at 31-23. For a four-minute stretch, the Ragin' Cajuns were 6-of-7 from the field.
In the second half, the Bobcats started 1-of-8 from the field in the first five minutes as Louisiana seized a 46-30 advantage.
Texas State closed it to an eight-point advantage at the 4:53 mark when it went on a 7-0 burst. Layups by Small and
Drue Drinnon were capped by a running three-pointer from Harrell that made it 61-53.
However, the Bobcats could not climb much closer. A three-pointer by Adams in the waning seconds did cut it to a six-point deficit with five seconds left.
NOTES
The 35.8 percent shooting by Texas State was its lowest since shooting a season-low 34 percent at Vanderbilt in the third game of the year on Nov. 14.
The Bobcats' trip to the NIT will be their second postseason tournament in four seasons. They were in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) in the 2018-19 season.
