Box Score
This might be Cupid's time of year, but
Royal Crouch seems to enjoy it pretty well, too.
Playing on either side of Valentine's Day, Crouch twice enjoyed career-best scoring days, most recently dumping in 24 points on Saturday to lead the Wayland Baptist Pioneers to a 109-81 Sooner Athletic Conference victory over Oklahoma City University.
"Royal had a great performance again," Wayland coach
Matt Garnett said of the junior from Gary, Ind., who had 23 points in Thursday night's 107-78 win over Southwestern Christian.
Many of Crouch's teammates – like
Travis Payton with 10 assists and nine rebounds,
Juhreece Thompson and
Markus Monroe with 19 points each,
Barry Johnson with 18 points and Bunja Jaboe with 12 rebounds – also shined as the Pioneers (18-8, 9-7) notched a key conference victory in Hutcherson Center.
"I'm very proud of our guys for winning a big Saturday game," said Garnett. "I believe our success this weekend was tied to Tuesday and Wednesday. They got off a really long bus ride (arriving in Plainview from Arkansas at 6 a.m. Tuesday) and decided that they were going to get better on Tuesday and Wednesday in practice. I think you saw the result of that."
Wayland had beaten OCU just once in the teams' last seven meetings, but on Saturday the Pioneers had little trouble knocking off the Stars (13-9, 9-6), who are ranked the equivalent of 27
th in the NAIA.
WBU came out on fire and assumed a 29-13 lead in the first 10½ minutes. The Stars cut the lead to single digits once after that, at 39-30, but Wayland went on an 11-4 run – including a dunk by Crouch right before the buzzer – to lead at halftime, 50-34.
The Pioneers opened the second half with 10 unanswered points in the first 2½ minutes to take a 16-point lead, and, even with 17:30 still left to play, the game was all but over.
"Momentum is a powerful thing. We were able to seize a little momentum at the beginning of the second half, then we wanted to try to defend as well as we possibly could down the stretch," Garnett said.
The Pioneers' largest lead was 33 at 86-53.
It was Wayland's third-highest point total of the season and the ninth time this season the Pioneers cracked the century mark. They scored 216 points in their last two games.
"I liked our aggressive nature offensively," Garnett said.
Wayland hit 85 percent (22-of-26) from the free-throw line, where Thompson was 7-of-9 and Crouch 6-of-6.
"It was really important that we got to the foul line," Garnett said. "OK City has such good physicality at the guard spots and very active bigs. They do a good job of guarding you, so you have to be able to get vertical (by penetrating off the dribble, feeding posts and cutting) with your offense. I thought we did a good job of that."
He said the Pioneers "were horrible at that" when they lost to OCU in their conference opener on Jan. 2, 83-62.
"I thought our balance tonight offensively was good," the coach said. "We had 18 assists, so we had the ball moving."
Especially Payton, who had more than half of those assists.
"As a floor general, he really managed that game well, knowing when to attack and when to run some offense," Garnett said. "He did a really good job of leading our team today."
The coach also praised Thompson.
"Juhreece was very aggressive on the block today. He did a good job getting to the foul line. I'm very proud of his performance."
OCU, which had won three straight, got 21 points from Terence Bonhomme, 12 from Terry Johnson, 11 from R.J. McGhee and 10 from Terrence Walker.
"The whole goal today and the key to having a good day, we thought, was to defend every possession of the game very well," Garnett said. "I thought we did that in stretches."
The Pioneers shot 52 percent (39-of-75) from the field, including 9-of-24 (38 percent) from 3-point range, and held a commanding rebounding edge, 52-32.
The Pioneers have four regular-season games left, including two road outings next week against Northwood (6-14, 5-10) in Cedar Hill at 8 p.m. Thursday and against No. 5 Southwestern Assemblies of God University (21-3, 13-2) in Waxahachie at 3 p.m. Saturday. Wayland beat both of those teams in the first half of SAC play, knocking off Northwood, 112-84 on the strength of 16 3-pointers, and then-No. 1 SAGU, 89-82.
"Northwood will be extremely good in their gym. They just beat (No. 14) Mid-America Christian there by 28," Garnett said. "Coach (Ray) Wilkerson really has them playing some good basketball down the stretch.
"Our effort against Northwood is going to start Monday in practice. Like I told the guys, few teams down the stretch of the season continue to get better. We have to be a team that finds a way to get better in practice. We'll play Thursday as well as we prepare."
Wayland ends the regular-season with home games against USAO (11-11, 8-7) on Feb. 27 and Texas Wesleyan (13-12, 6-9) on March 1. The Pioneers previously lost to both of those teams.
"This last stretch of games is against very good teams," Garnett said. "Each of them is huge."
