Flanigan takes ‘blame’ for Trojans’ dud
The UALR Trojans have not had many moments lower than Saturday night at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock men’s basketball team lost 81-51 to Georgia State. It was the Trojans’ worst Sun Belt Conference loss since a 79-48 setback to South Alabama on March 1, 1998.
It was the Trojans’ second-largest loss of the season. UALR (5-19, 2-9 Sun Belt) fell 86-46 at Bradley on Dec. 13.
The Trojans trailed Georgia State (18-6, 9-2) by as much as 36 points and didn’t score during nearly 40 percent of the second half.
Sophomore guard and leading scorer Andre Jones was ejected after a verbal exchange with an official with 7:50 left in the game.
The Trojans now have lost six consecutive games.
“I’ve got to take the blame on this,” second-year UALR Coach Wes Flanigan said. “We weren’t ready to play.”
UALR players were not available for postgame interviews.
“I thought we got off to a good start, but we didn’t take advantage of things,” Flanigan said. “Really, really sloppy basketball game, and we’ve got to play much better than that if we’re going to play a team like Georgia State in our league.”
The Trojans initial attack gave them brief control of the game.
UALR junior forward Oliver Black’s block led to a three-pointer by Jones. Freshman forward Kris Bankston then scored a layup to give the Trojans a 5-0 lead with 17:36 left in the first half.
Georgia State’s 14-0 run wiped out the good vibes, which occurred while UALR went 1-of-14 shooting (7.1 percent) over the next 10 minutes of play.
UALR also had five turnovers during the stretch, including a fruitless fast break when sophomore guard Ryan Pippins lost the ball out of bounds after recording a steal.
“Just simple things like that,” Flanigan said. “That’s keeping us from continuing to play with some momentum. It was downhill from there. We couldn’t get the bleeding stopped tonight.”
Panthers junior guard Devin Mitchell led Georgia State to a 38-24 halftime lead by going 6 of 8 from threepoint range.
Mitchell tied the single-game Sun Belt Conference record with 12 made three-pointer and finished with a career-high 38 points. It was the most points a men’s player has scored at the Jack Stephens Center since it opened for the 2005-2006 season.
Georgia State opened the second half with a 20-0 run, extending its lead to 58-24 with 12:48 left after Mitchell’s eighth three-pointer of the game.
UALR had five turnovers during the stretch, including a low pass from Pippens to Jones that bounced out of bounds, and the Trojans missed their first eight shots of the half.
Jones misfired on a threepoint attempt. Junior forward Ben Marcus missed two free throws. When senior forward Wadly Mompremier made a layup with 12:27 left in the game, the Trojans’ deficit was substantial.
Mitchell drove to the rim easily and lobbed an alley-oop dunk to sophomore guard D’Marcus Simonds to extend the lead to 62-28 with 11:47 left in the game.
When Jones was ejected, the Trojans trailed 70-38.
“That’s something that we will address,” Flanigan said. “We already addressed it as a team a little bit in that locker room. … He’ll be disciplined accordingly because of it.”
Former baseball coach Gary Hogan, former golf coach Wyn Norwood and former water polo player Simon Gould were inducted into the UALR Hall of Fame during halftime.
ARKANSAS STATE 91, GEORGIA SOUTHERN 89
Deven Simms scored 24 points to help lead Arkansas State University (9-15, 4-7 Sun Belt) to a victory over Georgia Southern (16-8, 7-4) in Jonesboro.
The game was tied at 85-85 with 2:06 remaining. But with 1:50 left, Simms made one of two free throws to give ASU a 86-85 lead.
Georgia Southern pulled within 90-89 with three seconds left on Tookie Brown’s two free throws. ASU was able to seal the victory as Ty Cockfield hit one of two free throws with two seconds left.
The Red Wolves were 20 of 28 at the free-throw line in the second half and 30 of 44 overall.
Rashad Lindsey had 18 points for the Red Wolves. Cockfield chipped in with 12 points and Tamas Bruce added 10 points.
Mike Hughes scored a game-high 27 points for the Eagles..