Southwestern Christian established control of Thursday night's Sooner Athletic Conference men's basketball game with a strong second half.
The visiting Eagles went on a 16-7 run to open the final half against John Brown and later used runs of 14-0 and 8-0 to put away the Golden Eagles in a 77-65 win at Bill George Arena.
Southwestern Christian 77, John Brown 65
SW Christian^35^42^—^77
John Brown^33^32^—^65
Southwestern Christian (10-5, 2-1): Simmons 20, White 19, Scott 16, Cole 12, Ray 10.
John Brown (9-5, 1-2): English 15, Caudle 14, Joseph 10, Waller 8, Ledford 7, Martinez 4, Smith 4, Toussaint 2, Egedi 1.
John Brown (9-5, 1-2 SAC) had several poor stretches of play on both ends of the floor in that time, offensively and defensively, according to head coach Jason Beschta.
"You can't have a bad stretch of minutes in this league, especially when it wasn't just about us missing shots on offense," Beschta said. "The fight that every coach has is about not letting your offense affect your defense. The things we can control -- we didn't defend very well, we didn't take care of the basketball, and our energy level was terrible.
"You can come out there and bring energy, even if you're playing bad. We had no energy on the floor. We had no energy on the bench, and (Southwest Christian) came out there and started building that lead slowly. Even not scoring, I think there's some things we could have done that would have slowed what they were doing down."
John Brown led 10-2 early after a 3-pointer from Zach English, but Southwestern Christian caught up to the Golden Eagles and the two teams battled in a closely-played first half.
With the game tied at 33 and 4.6 seconds left before halftime, SCU's Jamal Ray stole an inbound pass and scored on the other end to give the visiting Eagles a 35-33 lead at halftime.
Southwestern Christian's 16-7 run to open the second half gave itself a 51-40 lead with 11:35 left after a 3-point basket from Joshua Simmons.
JBU answered with an 8-0 run to pull within 51-48, thanks to a pair of 3-pointers from English and Jake Caudle and a basket by Marquis Waller.
Southwestern Christian responded by scoring the next 17 points to take a 65-48 lead.
John Brown wasn't finished though. The Golden Eagles went on a 12-2 run to cut it to 67-60 with 1:41 left after a pair of 3-pointers from Matt Ledford and English, but JBU could get no closer.
Southwestern Christian got a bucket inside from Shawn Scott and SCU then went 8 of 8 from the free-throw line to close out the game.
Southwestern Christian head coach Dave Bliss -- the former head coach at Oklahoma, New Mexico and most recently Baylor before resigning in 2003 under the cloud of an NCAA investigation -- said his team had to resort to playing a zone defense to try and slow down John Brown early in the game, and it paid off late in the game.
"John Brown got off to a great start in this game, and I know they were ready for us and they did some great things that kind of got us off-balanced," said Bliss, who's now in his second season as head coach at Southwestern Christian. "At halftime our guys made some adjustments and we were able to make our zone work a little bit. They were tough to guard, and we had to resort to a zone, which we haven't played as much as we played it today."
Southwestern Christian (10-5, 2-1) only had five players -- all starters -- crack the scoring column, but all five scored in double figures.
Simmons led SCU with 20 points, while Marvin White had 19, Scott 16, Casey Cole 12 and Ray 10. Southwestern Christian shot 30 of 61 from the field, 4 of 8 from behind the 3-point line and hit 13 of 14 free throws.
"Their top five is just really talented," Beschta said. "They were able to control tempo, and with what they do defensively playing a lot of zone, they were able to save some energy because we didn't make them work and try to exploit what they were doing."
English led John Brown with 15 points, while Caudle had 14 and Brandon Joseph 10 off the bench.
Two of JBU's starters, leading scorer Ricky Roberts and Josh Bowling, were held scoreless.
JBU shot 25 of 61 from the field, but only 13 of 36 from behind the 3-point line. JBU only attempted four free throws for the game.
JBU returned to action on Saturday at Wayland Baptist. Results were not available at presstime.
The Golden Eagles will return to Texas on Thursday when they play at 8 p.m. against Southwestern Assemblies of God.
Sports on 01/08/2017