Bisons avenge only loss, defeat UAH at home

The Bisons rallied from an early deficit to take down the Alabama-Huntsville Chargers at home last night. The Chargers had beaten the Bisons by 12 in Huntsville eight days earlier, but HU played a more inspired game this time around, taking out the usually fundamentally-sound UAH team.

The Chargers did manage to stifle Lonnie Smith again, holding him to just 7-of-19 shooting, although he did finish with a tied-for-team-high 19 points. Patrick Andrepont was the other 19-point scorer, and he added seven rebounds, making 7-of-11 from the field (3-3 from outside). Brandon Sims added 11 points and 7 rebounds for a solid night, and Alassane Savadogo grabbed nine rebounds in just ten minutes on the floor.

My player of the game, even though he didn’t have the highest game score (that would be Andrepont’s 15.2) would be Jacob Thies. He made several heady plays to keep the momentum in our favor, and he gave us something we’ve desperately needed: someone to get inside for good shots, and either make them or get fouled (and make the free throws). One play was particularly impressive, when UAH had a 2-on-1 fast break, and Thies managed to take the charge as the only guy back on defense, giving us the ball back. I’m guessing that his nine points were a career high, just because I don’t remember anything like that from him last year.

The four key stats:

UAH still played good defense, holding us back a bit in the shooting department, but we made up for that with excellent rebounding (especially on the defensive end…the UAH post players just couldn’t get any positioning on us), excellent ball-handling, and our first solid performance at the free-throw line.

Elsewhere in the GSC West, Delta State lost their first game of the year, falling in a road game at North Alabama (a team we beat on the road last week). UNA was on fire the whole game, making 30-of-54 from the field and 13-of-20 from outside, so it’s amazing that DSU pretty much kept up. UCA and OBU took down Central Baptist and Arkansas Baptist, respectively. Southern Arkansas lost at home to Texas A&M-Commerce, which is one of the best teams in the Lone Star Conference. There’s still no word yet on Henderson State’s game at Oakland City at this point, but as soon as I get the results, they will be reflected in the stats.