SMU Basketball cruises past Tulsa, 83-58, to advance in AAC Tournament
SMU Basketball didn’t get a point out of star point guard Kendric Davis in the first half, but it didn’t matter as the Mustangs built a 40-29 halftime lead. The Mustangs cruised to a 83-58 win with four players in double-digits on Friday.
Guards Emmanuel Bandoumel and Michael Weathers, who hit a shot at the first half buzzer, led the way for SMU Basketball with 16 and 10 points in the first half, respectively. Weathers added a layup in the final two minutes to finish with 12.
“It’s just about everybody picking each other up like, you know, not everybody going to have a good game,” Bandoumel said after the game. “Somebody just switching up, sometimes it’s Marcus, sometimes it’s KD, sometimes it’s Mike or me or Zach. It will change every time. We’ve got a great team. It’s just about being ready all the time when your name is called.
“We do a good job of finding the hot hand. Like in the first half it was me and Darius, switch up to KD. It’s just about finding the hot hand all the time.
Davis exploded in the second half, as one would expect from the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year. The Houston native finished with all 24 of his points in the second, going 7-of-23 from the field, including six three-pointers. Davis went 0-for-10 in the first half.
Head coach Tim Jankovich quipped to Davis that after the first half he almost told him to quit shooting, but all jokes aside, his his team believed in him.
“My teammates just told me keep shooting. I had great looks,” Davis said after the game. “And this isn’t my first half that I went struggling. I done had a couple halves like this. You just keep shooting. Eventually they’ll either go in or they don’t. I’m going to stay aggressive.”
Forward Marcus Weathers, a Second Team All-AAC selection, added 18 points and nine rebounds.
The defense was the storyline for SMU, thwarting 10 Tulsa shots with blocks. Michael Weathers swatted away seven of those shots. The Golden Hurricane had five as a team. The Mustangs forced 12 turnovers while giving the ball away just three times.
“Michael certainly, even Marcus (looks at Marcus) you’ve got to admit, per inch Michael’s got to be the best shot blocker in America without a doubt, let alone just period,” Jankovich said. “But I’ve never seen a guy with a better knack or at 6 foot 3 that can do that. But he’s had double-figure rebounds. Seven blocks is just amazing. He scores. He drives. He does so many things.”
The win helped SMU Basketball keep its name squarely in the mix for an NCAA Tournament berth. The Mustangs were the First Team Out, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi prior to the game on Friday.
Tulsa guard Sam Griffin scored 13 of his 16 points in the first half coming off the bench. Starting guard Darien Jackson and forward Jeriah Horne added 11 and 12 points, respectively.
Up next, SMU Basketball will face Memphis on Saturday at 4 p.m. CT on ESPN2 inside Dickies Arena. A spot in the AAC Championship game and another boost to SMU’s NCAA Tournament resume is on the line.
“We weren’t going to change much,” Jankovich said of trying to beat a team for a third straight time like SMU will try to do vs. Memphis. “Maybe one or two little tiny things but we just wanted to make sure we knew what we were going to do, what we’d been doing, what we feel works against them, what we don’t. And our guys in a short period grasp a lot and they had a good memory as well of some of the things that we covered when we played them last time.”
