The Wayland Baptist Pioneers jumped out to a 15-point first half lead, and then had to hang on for dear life in a 79-74 win over Southwestern Christian University before a sparse holiday crowd at Hutcherson Center.
Rishi Kakad had a game-high 23 points to lead the Wayland men to their fourth victory of the season. Jason Griffin came off the bench to score 16, and Bobby Watkins, in his first action of the season, contributed 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists. Rodrigo Silva also hit the double figure mark in scoring with 10 points.
Back-to-back jumpers by Griffin and Watkins gave the Pioneers an 18-point lead (31-13), their largest of the game, with 6:22 left in the first half. The Eagles closed the margin to 13 at the intermission (38-25) on a driving jumper in the paint by Keenan Seyhorn.
Southwestern Christian outscored WBU 22-11 in the first seven minutes of the second period to tie the score at 49, but Wayland regained the lead for good on a jumper by Kakad at the 12:31 mark. Two free throws by Emmanuel Brown, a dunk by Griffin off a pass from Johnny Terra, and a jumper by Watkins opened the Pioneer lead back up to eight.
The Eagles' Reimond Prince broke the 8-0 run with a layup, but Griffin answered with his only three-pointer of the game to make it 60-51 with 9:53 on the clock.
After Tradidas Williams' dunk put the visitors back to within two four minutes later, the Pioneers responded with seven straight beginning with Kakad's fifth trey of the contest.
Seyhorn made it a one possession game with 22 ticks left, but Kakad and Griffin hit four straight free throws to nail down the win for the Pioneers.
Wayland shot 56.6 percent (30-of-53) for the game from the field, but was good on just 12 of its 23 attempts (52.2%) from the charity stripe. Southwestern Christian overcame a poor first half of shooting (32.4%) to finish up at 42.5% (31-73), but the Eagles also struggled from the line, hitting just 3 of 7 attempts.
Tommie Sanders, who played all 40 minutes of the contest, recorded a game-high nine assists for the WBU men, and also had three steals and one block.
The Pioneers, which had a distinct height advantage, was outscored 44-36 in the paint, but won the battle of the boards, 40-35. The Pioneers got 32 points off their bench, compared to 19 by the visitors.
WBU returns to Sooner Athletic Conference play this weekend with road games at Mid-America Christian on Saturday and Oklahoma City on Monday.
