Tigers rally from 14 points down to win

It’s a college rivalry unmatched in the Houston area: Texas Southern vs. Prairie View A&M.

The fans from both schools are vocal. The players understand the importance of what’s at stake. It makes for good basketball.

And Saturday night didn’t disappoint.

The crowd of 7,235 was in it from beginning to end, and so was Prairie View.

But it was first-place TSU that prevailed, rallying from a 14-point firsthalf deficit to beat the Panthers 74-61 at H&PE Arena.

“We got off to a slow start. I knew we would with the big crowd,” TSU coach Mike Davis said. “But we did a good job of keeping our composure and driving the basketball.

“With a team like that, you can’t really run a lot of plays because they try to junk everything up. So it’s all about us getting the rebound, pushing the ball in transition and attacking the basket.”

TSU stumbled at the start — falling behind 20-6 and 22-8 — and so did its 7-foot center, Marvin Jones. But the big man picked his game up, lifting the Tigers (13-10, 9-1 Southwestern Athletic Conference) with his inside play (10 points, 13 rebounds) and overall aggressiveness.

“Coach was telling me I needed to be in the right spots because they want me to be the anchor on defense, the middle clog,” Jones said. “Me talking to people, making sure everybody is seeing the screens, seeing switches. They want me to be that glue guy. I had to step it up.”

Guard Zach Lofton led TSU with 21 points.

Prairie View (8-16, 5-5) didn’t go down lightly, reducing its deficit to 59-56 with 3:45 left. Troy Thompson scored a team-high 21 points despite playing with a calf strain.

Tevin Bellinger added 15 points and Zachary Hamil- ton had 12 for the Panthers.

Thompson, who was 5-of-8 on 3-pointers, made his first three shots — all 3s — as Prairie View jumped out to an 11-4 lead.

TSU, however, closed the first half with a 9-2 run to take a 34-29 halftime lead.

“You’ve got to learn how to sustain leads and finish,” Prairie View coach Byron Smith said. “It was early in the game, and we knew they hadn’t played their best basketball at that point and they were going to make several runs, and they did.”