Men’s Basketball: Upset special

Men’s Basketball: Upset special

Joshua Parrott • jparrott@theadvertiser.com • January 28, 2011

UL picked up its first marquee win of the Bob Marlin era— and it came against the most experienced team in the Sun Belt Conference.

Seven players scored in double figures for the Ragin’ Cajuns, and Randell Daigle became the 39th player in school history with 1,000 career points in a 93-88 win over North Texas on Thursday night in the Cajundome.

UL (6-14, 3-5 Sun Belt) has now won a season-best three straight games after knocking off the preseason Sun Belt West Division favorite Mean Green (16-5, 5-3) one year after it advanced to the NCAA tournament.

"This win shows everybody else in the conference that our record means nothing," said Daigle, a senior guard who scored 13 points. "We’ve played a lot of games and were close, but we hadn’t competed like we did tonight. That shows what we’re capable of doing every night."

A balanced effort led the way for the Cajuns. Travis Bureau logged a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. La’Ryan Gary scored 14 points. Javan Mitchell set a career high with 13 points and equaled a personal best with seven rebounds. Bryant Mbamalu added 12 points before fouling out. Raymone Andrews and Josh Brown chipped in 11 points apiece. Andrews also added a career-high six assists.

UL also shot 50 percent from the floor and outrebounded UNT, 40-35, despite playing without forwards Scottie Farrington (flu) and Courtney Wallace (academics). It was the second-best scoring effort of the season for the Cajuns, who lost to the Mean Green, 80-63, on Jan. 1 in Denton.

"That was an exciting basketball game, and we beat a very good team," UL coach Bob Marlin said. "Before the game we talked about how this wasn’t Centenary or Monroe. This was the best team that we’ve played in our division so far even though they don’t have the best (league) record."

Josh White, a Baton Rouge native, led UNT with 21 points. Tristan Thompson scored 20 points, and Jacob Holmen had 15 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.

The Mean Green got little from forward George Odufuwa, who logged eight points and four rebounds in 23 minutes before fouling out in the second half. The senior entered the night averaging 11.5 points and 10.2 rebounds per game this season.

"I didn’t think that we were as committed as we needed to be for 40 minutes to do what we needed to do to win this game," said UNT coach Johnny Jones, a DeRidder native and ex-LSU guard and assistant. "That includes hustle on defense. We weren’t committed defensively, and I think that’s obvious when you give up 93 points. That makes it tough to win anywhere."

UNT led only once all night — on Josh White’s floater in the lane 30 seconds into the game — before the Cajuns pulled ahead 29-19 on Randell Daigle’s jumper with 5:39 left until halftime.

Daigle connected with Josh Brown for an alley-oop dunk a minute later to give UL another double-digit lead at 31-21. The Mean Green fought back and trimmed its deficit to 38-35 at halftime with a 14-7 run to close the half.

The Cajuns eventually stretched their lead to 14 points at 68-54 following back-to-back 3s by Daigle and Andrews with 10 minutes left and appeared to be pulling away. That was short lived as UNT made it a three-point game in the final minute. Brown helped seal it with a steal and an acrobatic dunk on the other end to complete the upset.

"We just competed and played better than we did up in Denton," Bureau said. "We didn’t compete up there at all. If we defended the guards right, we knew that we could win the game."

The loss was the third in six games for UNT, which slipped a little further behind West Division leader Denver (10-10, 6-1) in the conference standings.

"To win on the road, you’ve got to be special," Jones said. "It’s going to take 40 minutes, and you’re going to have to guard people and rebound the ball. We didn’t do that well enough."

UL’s combo of Gary, Mbamalu, Bureau, Andrews, Brown and Mitchell scored 50 of their combined 75 points in the second half. That balanced production helped the Cajuns win after getting only four points and six rebounds from J.J. Thomas, who had averaged 17 points and 12 rebounds in his previous four games.

Daigle scored 12 of his 13 points in the first half and joined some elite company in the 1,000-point club as UL carries some momentum and a three-game winning streak into Sunday’s game at South Alabama (9-10, 3-5).

"It’s a great accomplishment for myself," said Daigle, a Northside grad. "And on top of that, we won."

Extra points

The Cajuns now lead the all-time series, 17-15 "» Marlin won his first game in four tries against UNT "» Jones is now 11-10 against the Cajuns "» UNT fell to 4-5 on the road this season "» Dating back to last season UL is 12-1 at home against Sun Belt opponents "» White became the first UNT player with 1,500 points and 300 assists.

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