Box Score OKLAHOMA CITY –
Royal Crouch scored a career-high 34 points Friday night to lead the 13
th-ranked Wayland Baptist Pioneers to a 77-62 victory over Oklahoma City University and into the Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament championship game for the second straight year.
"These guys battled," Wayland coach
Matt Garnett said of the Pioneers (26-5), who will take on either No. 14 Mid-America Christian (22-9) or Southwestern Assemblies of God University (22-9) at 4 p.m. Saturday for the tournament title and an automatic bid to the NAIA Division I Men's National Championship. MACU and SAGU met later Friday.
Wayland has never won a SAC Tournament title.
Against host OCU (18-8), Wayland broke open a tight game by scoring 14 unanswered points – eight from Crouch – early in second half. That took the Pioneers' 48-43 lead to a much more comfortable 19-point, 62-43 spread with 12 minutes left.
"I thought the guys came out and played well in the second half," Garnett said. "In the first half we couldn't really shift to the next gear, but we talked at halftime that if we stayed the course and played every possession things would work out."
The outcome was never in doubt the rest of the way. Wayland increased its cushion to as many as 25 points before the Stars scored the final 10 points of the game to account for the final 15-point WBU margin of victory.
Crouch got his 34 points on 12-of-17 shooting from the field and 9-of-12 shooting from the free-throw line. The senior also had a team-high 12 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season, and second in three games.
"What a performance he put on," Garnett said of Crouch, who bettered the 31 points he scored against West Texas A&M early in the season.
Bunja Yaboe netted 11 points and came up one rebound shy of a double-double.
Plamen Hristov also put in 11.
Hristov hit three of Wayland's eight 3-pointers, including one in the game-changing 14-0 second-half run and one in a game-opening 11-0 run for the Pioneers. Crouch accounted for the eight other points for Wayland to start the game.
Wayland got another big 3 from
Maurice Redmond right before the first-half buzzer. OCU had just nailed a 3-pointer to pull to within 40-39, and Redmond's bomb from close to 30 feet made it a four-point game at intermission.
Garnett said Redmond's 3-pointer helped delivere a message to his team.
"That reminded us that you have to go after it. You can't win games in a conference tournament by playing not to lose," the coach said. "Maurice is always ready when his number is called."
OCU played most of the game without leading scorer Tharone Chilton, who scored six points before suffering an apparent knee injury in the first half.
R.J. McGhee with 16 was the only one player with more than eight points for OCU, which shot just 30 percent (19-of-63) from the field, hitting 10-of-29 (35 percent) 3-pointers. The Stars made 12-of-16 fre throws (75 percent).
Wayland, which outrebounded OCU 48-43, wound up hitting 44 percent (26-of-59) from the field, 33 percent (8-of-24) from beyond the arc, and 50 percent (17-of-34) from the foul stripe.
The Pioneers committed just nine turnovers.
