LSC Men's Basketball Championship Central

Texas A&M-Kingsville opened the game hitting shots, making nine 3-pointers in the first half. And the Javelinas certainly closed the game with buckets, making eight of their last 10 field goals to outlast DBU Friday at Comerica Center.
            Texas A&M-Kingsville, the No. 3 seed, will move on to Saturday’s semifinal round of the Lone Star Conference Basketball Championship after the 71-66 win over the Patriots. The Javelinas improved to 21-8 this year by beating DBU for the second time in two weeks. The Patriots defeated Kingsville in Dallas back in January before the Javelinas won the rematch on Feb. 27.
            This time around, Kingsville won on both ends of the floor. Both teams shot 21 attempts from 3-point land, but TAMUK hit 10 to just three by DBU.
            “That’s really our game, we win with defense,” TAMUK coach Johnny Estelle said. “It wasn’t always pretty but I thought we settled down and played the way we needed to play.”
            Kingsville hit nine 3’s in the first half and led by as much as 14, only to lead 36-28 at the break. In the second half, the Patriots scrambled back to actually take a two-point lead with 14:21 to play. But the Javelinas responded and their only 3-pointer of the half proved to be a big shot as Rashon Thomas drilled a long trey with the shot clock running down. The bucket gave Kingsville a six-point lead with 8:03 to play, but more importantly was the first of five straight field goals by the Javelinas, who eventually made eight of their last 10.
            John Mouton led Kingsville with 15 points and also grabbed six rebounds. Thomas, who was the LSC’s Sixth Man of the Year, came off the bench to score 14, including three triples. Tre Flowers and Daniel Severo each scored 10.
            For the Patriots, Chandler Jacobs led all scorers with 17, while Jonathyn Washington added 13, Conner Lidiak had 12 and Tylan Dean scored 11 off the bench.
            Aside from playing each other three times this year, Kingsville and DBU are locked in another battle in the regional rankings. Entering the tournament, DBU (21-9) ranked sixth in the South Central region, while Kingsville was seventh.
            Of course, two more wins by the Javelinas would give them an automatic berth in the regional tournament as the LSC Champions.
 
TAMUK Notes:

• The Javelinas now have 21 victories, the most in a single season since 1995-96, when current coach Johnny Estelle was a star guard for the team.
• That 1996 season was also the last time A&M-Kingsville won an LSC Championship, just the second in school history.  
• Kingsville improved to a perfect 17-0 in games with at least 10 assists. Against DBU, they dished out 16 dimes, including five each by Creighton Avery and Chauncey Thomas.
• TAMUK had a 27-13 advantage in bench points, led by 14 from Rashon Thomas.

 
DBU Notes:  

• The Patriots dominated the paint against Kingsville, outscoring the Javelinas 42-20.
• Despite finishing the regular season ranked second in the LSC in 3-point percentage at 38 percent, the Patriots hit only 3 of 21 (14.3 percent).
• Carter Brown, the newly-crowned LSC Defensive Player of the Year, picked up three steals and nine rebounds. Brown is DBU’s all-time leader in both steals (232) and assists (442).
• While this was DBU’s first season in the LSC, it was the school’s fifth-straight 20-win season.