No.5 Pioneers slip in 1st round of SAC Tourney

Wayland Baptist's dream of adding a Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament championship to its first-ever regular-season title ended Tuesday night in Hutcherson Center when eighth-seeded Oklahoma-Panhandle State upset the top-seeded, fifth-ranked Pioneers, 76-67.
 
"Congratulations to Panhandle," Wayland coach Ty Harrelson said. "I think (OPSU) Coach (Aaron) Coombs has done a great job all year. I thought he did a great job of managing the game and taking advantage of our defensive weaknesses."
 
Wayland (24-7) led by nine points midway through the second half, but the Aggies (16-13) caught fire and went on a 17-4 run to take the lead. OPSU later scored eight straight points to seal the victory that qualifies the Aggies to advance to the tournament semifinals Friday at Oklahoma City University's Abe Lemons Arena.
 
"We just did not shoot the ball well," Harrelson said. "We shot well in the first half, but the second half might be one of the worst halves of basketball I've coached. I take the blame for that. I didn't get us to execute our offense the way it's designed to be executed,"
 
Wayland must wait three weeks before its next game at the NAIA National Championships, for which the Pioneers automatically qualified by winning the SAC regular-season. The national championships begin March 20 in Kansas City, Mo.
 
"I don't think we were looking ahead; I think we just got beat today," Harrelson said. "Their season was on the line and they played like it. At the same time we didn't play with a sense of urgency."
 
OPSU provided the SAC with one of three first-round, on-the-road upsets Tuesday in which lower-seeded teams won: No. 3 USAO fell to No. 6 Mid-America Christian, 75-74, and No. 4 Langston lost to No. 5 Oklahoma City, 84-73. In the other game, No. 2 seed John Brown prevailed at home over No. 7 Southwestern Assemblies of God, 94-69.
 
That just shows the parity in the Sooner Athletic Conference," Harrelson said.
 
The Pioneers were trying to knock off OPSU for the third time this season, having won previously 82-76 and, most recently, 97-87 on Feb. 12 in Goodwell, Okla.
 
"They say it's always tough to beat a team three times, and that's the way it looked tonight," Harrelson said.
 
Wayland actually was on its way to getting win No. 3 over the Aggies, taking the lead some 3½ minutes into the game and holding it until the 7½-minute mark of the second half. The Pioneers went up by as many as nine once in the first half and again in the second.
 
But, after shooting 52 percent from the field in the first half, Wayland went cold in the second when the Pioneers made just 8-of-32 shots (25 percent) overall and 3-of-16 3-pointers (19 percent).
 
"You have to put the ball in the basket," Harrelson said.
 
OPSU, meanwhile, shot 62 percent from the field (13-of-21) in the second half, including 55 percent (6-of-11) from beyond the arc.
 
After Wayland went from leading by nine to trailing by four in a span of less than five minutes, the Pioneers kept the Aggies in their sights, down by five, 64-59 with more than three minutes left.
 
But OPSU's Breiman Alexander and Baris Ulker knocked down 3-pointers as part of a 7-0 march for the Aggies, and suddenly Wayland found itself trailing by a dozen, 71-59.
 
While the Pioneers were missing 3-pointers in crunch time, the Aggies sealed it by hitting free throws, including four straight by Khallid Edwards. J.J. Culver's 3-pointer at the buzzer made for the final nine-point deficit in what was just Wayland's third home loss of the season in 17 outings.
 
"We did a great job at the free-throw line (18-of-21), but we probably settled for too many 3-pointers," Harrelson said. "When we got down we didn't necessarily take bad shots, but we should have been taking the ball to the basket and we settled for shooting outside jumpers that weren't falling.
 
"But I don't want to take anything away from Panhandle. They did a really good job defensively on us."
 
Wayland – which held a 34-28 rebounding edge, including 14-5 on the offensive end – got 13 points each from Culver and Throns, while Trevonta Robertson ended with 11 and Tre Fillmore eight.
 
OPSU depended mostly on its five starters, three of whom played all 40 minutes.
 
"They had five guys who played a lot of minutes, and all five of them are dangerous," Harrelson said.
 
While Wayland did a decent job controlling Alexander, the NAIA's second-leading scorer who finished eight below his 24-ppg average, Edwards and Ulker made up the difference by going for a season-high 24 for Edwards and 23 for Ulker.
 
Harrelson said the Pioneers now must refocus.
 
"We're disappointed to not have a chance to win the conference tournament, but we still have an opportunity at our big goal to win the national tournament," Harrelson said. "We earned the right to be in the national tournament.
 
"We'll learn from our mistakes and move forward."
 
NAIA Div. I Men's Basketball Coaches' Top 25 (Feb. 26, 2019)

RANK	LAST WEEK	SCHOOL [1st Place Votes]	RECORD	FINAL POINTS
1	2	Benedictine (Kan.) [8]	26-2	219
2	1	LSU Alexandria (La.) [1]	27-3	212
3	4	Georgetown (Ky.)	25-4	201
4	8	Tougaloo (Miss.)	24-4	187
5	10	The Master's (Calif.)	24-5	182
5	5	Stillman (Ala.)	26-4	182
5	9	Wayland Baptist (Texas)	24-6	182
8	3	Missouri Baptist	27-3	178
9	7	Carroll (Mont.)	24-6	174
10	6	Vanguard (Calif.)	24-5	150
10	12	Wiley (Texas)	22-5	150
12	13	Lewis-Clark State (Idaho)	24-6	147
13	11	Pikeville (Ky.)	22-7	135
14	15	William Carey (Miss.)	22-8	124
15	20	LSU Shreveport (La.)	21-9	118
16	16	William Penn (Iowa)	20-8	109
17	19	Bethel (Tenn.)	23-7	105
18	23	John Brown (Ark.)	21-9	96
19	17	William Jessup (Calif.)	20-9	92
20	NR	Talladega (Ala.)	23-6	80
21	21	Cumberlands (Ky.)	21-9	79
22	NR	Science & Arts (Okla.)	20-9	77
23	24	Arizona Christian	22-7	51
24	14	Peru State (Neb.)	18-10	50
25	NR	Campbellsville (Ky.)	21-8	49

Dropped from the Top 25: Providence (Mont.), Dillard (La.), Oklahoma City
Others Receiving Votes: Rocky Mountain (Mont.) 32, Langston (Okla.) 31, St. Thomas (Texas) 29, Hope International (Calif.) 28, Providence (Mont.) 19, Loyola (La.) 17, Dillard (La.) 6, Oklahoma City 5.