Bulldogs glad to be back home
RUSTON, La. - After spending the last month playing seven out of nine games on the road, Louisiana Tech will have seven of its next nine games inside the Thomas Assembly Center starting tonight against North Texas with tipoff set for 6:30 p.m.
Since mid-December, Louisiana Tech (10-9, 1-5 C-USA) has played in Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama, as well as a couple of neutral site games in New Orleans.
The four road conference games during this tough stretch came against some tough competition.
The teams are all in the top five in the C-USA standings and who have a combined league record of 17-3.
The theme for this past weekend’s games at
Middle Tennessee and at UAB was a tale of two halves.
The Bulldogs were solid in the first stanza, trailing the Blue Raiders by two and leading the Blazers by one at intermission.
However, the Bulldogs did not execute well in the second half of either game, shooting exactly 30 percent from the field.
Part of the struggling has been having to play without starting point guard and leading scorer DaQuan Bracey. He played through the pain at Middle Tennessee, but he sat out the 74-62 loss to UAB.
A bright spot though was the play of Amorie Archibald.
The true freshman stepped in and registered his first career double-double with 13 points and 10 assists.
Another bright spot was the senior leader Jacobi Boykins becoming the program’s all-time career leader in made three-pointers, surpassing Kenyon McNeail, who set the record of 224 back in 2014.
These two will be a crucial part of trying to hold home-court advantage to move up in the league standings, starting with the matchup versus a resurgent North Texas (10-8, 3-2 C-USA) squad.
Under first-year head coach Grant McCasland, the Mean Green have already surpassed their overall win total from a year ago (had eight victories last season).
They have also already surpassed their conference win total from a season ago when they had two. All three of their league wins have come on the road, including an 85-78 victory over the Rice Owls in Houston this past Saturday.
It has been the guard play of North Texas that has made them successful.
Roosevelt Smart anchors the team, averaging 19.3 points per game. He has stepped up his game even more in league action, averaging 23.8 points per C-USA contest.
Smart just recently picked his second C-USA Player of the Week honor after scoring 42 points, the fifth highest scoring output in North Texas history, while setting a program record with 10 made three-pointers.
He lets it fly from deep, ranking first in the league in threepoint field goal attempts (160), three-point field goals per game (3.61) and made three-pointers (65).
All of those numbers also rank in the top 12 in the country.
Louisiana Tech has the upper hand in the series 22-9 that dates back to 1952. The Bulldogs have dominated at home, holding a 13-1 advantage with the lone loss coming in the very first meeting.
It has been 13 straight home victories ever since with 11 of those coming in the TAC.
For the past two seasons, the Bulldogs and Mean Green have faced each other twice during the regular season.
The two teams will only play each other once this season.