By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
You might not think that winning two games would be a big deal to LSUS basketball coach Kyle Blankenship. After all, he’s won a few hundred during his career with the Pilots.
But these weren’t just any two games.
There wasn’t just one showdown on the line for first place in the Red River Athletic Conference Thursday night at The Dock between LSUS and Xavier, there were two as the women’s and men’s teams battled it out.
“If you’d have told me before that we’d go 2-0 tonight,” Blankenship said, “I would have been as excited as I could be.”
He’s pretty excited; the Pilots went 2-0 as he coached both ends of the sweep.
The games were all they were supposed to be — tight throughout, emotional, physical and when it came down to the final minutes, it was time for one team to make the plays to win it.
In both cases, that was LSUS.
The women’s team took advantage of an “almost” time out to rally in the final minutes to win 61-59 and remain unbeaten in the conference with a 9-0 record (13-2 overall).
The men’s game was tied at 68-all with 3:25 to play when the Pilots went on a 13-4 run to end it 81-72.
“We needed that for the men,” Blankenship said. “We don’t lose a lot at home but last game we got embarrassed (a 92-73 loss to Texas College) last Saturday. We challenged our guys to protect The Dock and do what we needed to do if we wanted to stay in the conference race.”
The win kept the Pilots in a first-place tie with LSU Alexandria with a 7-2 conference record (12-3 overall). Staying at the top of the standings is nice, but Blankenship was particularly pleased with how his team played.
“Collectively, we just wanted to win,” he said. “We didn’t complain about coming out of the game, we weren’t worried about our minutes. We’ve talked about this the last weeks. (Before), it was always ‘I want to win, but …’ and tonight we didn’t have that.”
What they did have were some key shots and clutch free throws down the stretch, particularly from 6-foot-9 senior Tyler Washington and senior guard Paul King.
“We moved Tyler Washington back into the starting lineup to try to give the team a boost,” Blankenship said. “He’s been playing well lately and he made some big plays tonight. He had a really good stat line (18 points, 11 rebounds), but he made some really good hustle plays too.”
King had 16 points, including a 3-pointer with less than three minutes to play that stretch the lead and make things more comfortable for the Pilots.
The Pilots made all seven free throw attempts in the final two minutes.
The LSUS women were down 59-55 without the ball with 47 seconds to go when things turned around in a rather strange way. Xavier got a rebound on a missed 3-pointer and had two players signaling for a time out. But the officials didn’t seem to notice. Mansfield native Taylor Dewitt, who was dribbling, then tried to call for time, but she was called for travelling first.
Pilot ball.
LSUS ran a quick inbounds play for Derrica Gilbert, who immediately drained a 3-pointer to make it 59-58. The Pilots fouled with 25 seconds to play, hoping to just get the ball back with a chance to tie.
But when Xavier’s Jaleah LaFargue missed both free throws, they got more than that. LSUS point guard Alexis Brown went coast to coast for a twisting layup to put LSUS ahead for the first time in the entire fourth quarter.
Two missed layups by Xavier and a failed inbounds pass later and the Pilots had come away with an important win.
“We picked up the tempo and started playing a little faster,” said Blankenship. “(Xavier) did a good job of taking away what we like to do. We finally got back to doing what got us here and that’s getting stops and forcing turnovers on the defensive end and getting out and running in transition.”
Gilbert led with 16 points and Destanee Roblow added 15.
LSUS will be back in action at The Dock Saturday for a doubleheader against North American, beginning at 2 p.m.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com