The Lion basketball team two-game winning streak was broken on Thursday, Feb. 20 as the Lions traveled to University of New Orleans to face off against the Privateers, which took place in the Lakefront Arena. At the end of Thursday night’s game, the final score was 58-67.
Although the team suffered a loss, Head Coach Jim Yarbrough saw some strengths on display Thursday night.
“We did some very nice things throughout the game offensively,” said Yarbrough. “We came out really well to begin the first half. We had nice isolation along with keeping real nice pressure on the opposing players.”
A 9-2 run was gained by the Lions in the first three minutes of the opening game. For the majority of the first half, Southeastern (11-14, 6-8 SLC) took the lead with a score of 27-23. In the second half, UNO (11-11, 8-6 SLC) extended their lead to 13 with only 8:09 left of playing time. The deficit was narrowed to four points by the Lions and many continuous three pointers by junior guards JaMichael Hawkins and Julian Chiera.
While struggling with shooting and ball handling, Yarbrough took note on some things that needed to be improved in order to avoid yet another loss for the Lions.
“Well, we stopped scoring and I think our team is capable of more than 58 points, but we’ll go back and start working on things such as man to man pressure, so we could get comfortable with that,” said Yarbrough. “I’m pretty pleased with the defensive effort, and our idea was to keep them under the mid-sixties and that’s exactly what we did.”
Lions shot with a 41.3 percentage (16-of-46), but they were out-rebounded by the Privateers with only 35-24 in the game.
The Lions were led by senior forward, Antonio Benton with 16 points and five rebounds. Ten points were added by Chiera, as well as nine points each by senior guard Dre Evans and Hawkins.
Yarbrough strategizes a plan to make up for the loss on Thursday night, when the Lions go against Northwestern State Demons.
“We’ve got three very challenging games coming up with the number one, two and three teams in the league,” said Yarbrough. “We’re going to have to really test ourselves and push ourselves, but I really want to get the team there and see what we’re capable of doing.”
This week the Lions will return to the University Center on Thursday, Feb. 27 and face off with the Demons. Thursday’s game will count toward one of Southeastern’s final two home games of this season. The game will also be broadcasted live from ESPN3 as a part of the Southland package.
More information regarding the team can be found at lionsports.net.