MONROE, La. ? Junior Tony Hooper scored a season-high 27 points and the ULM men's basketball team continued its winning ways at Fant-Ewing Coliseum Tuesday night, downing Alcorn State 105-75 in the team's 2007-08 regular season home opener.
ULM (2-4, 0-0 Sun Belt) pushed its home win streak to 15-consecutive games, moving the Warhawks into a tie with Southern Illinois for 10th-longest active mark in the nation.
“Tony is definitely our spiritual, emotional leader out there,” ULM head coach Orlando Early said. “It is weird. He's not very vocal outside of ?let's go'. He's not a rah-rah guy and telling guys where to be. He is our energy guy and when he is going, we are going.”
Hooper scored 24 of his game-high 27 points in the first half to help the Warhawks build a 59-38 advantage at the half and led the Warhawks to finishing the game by hitting 59.7 percent of their shots from the field.
Alcorn State (0-4, 0-0 SWAC) kept the game close through the first 11 minutes, trailing only 30-26 with 8:05 on the clock before ULM began to pull away. The Warhawks scored 11 of the next 14 points to push the lead to double-digits.
Alcorn State would cut the lead to nine on a made 3-point shot by Alex Owumi with 5:08 remaining, but Hooper poured in another jumper to push the Warhawk advantage to double figures for good.
ULM finished the first half on an 18-6 run.
The Warhawks kept the deficit right around 20 for the first 10 minutes of the half before Alcorn State mounted a run led by Kendrick James. Alcorn State would draw to as close as 80-68 at the 9:02-mark in the second half before the Warhawks pulled away for good.
Three Warhawks had season high scoring runs with leading scorer Tony Hooper scoring 24 of his season high 27points in the first half. Jonas Brown also had his season best with 20 points which was echoed by freshman Mitchell Hampton's season best 17 points.
Freshman Mitchell Hampton and junior David Garrison put the exclamation point on the game in the final minute, combining for four dunks to help ULM crack the century mark for the first time since December 19, 2006 against Wesley College.
“I am excited for Mitch,” Early said. “He plays hard every day. He is getting better every day in practice. He's learning and doing good things. He loves to dunk the ball and for him to get those dunks at the end of the game is good for us.”
Hampton finished with a career-high 14 points. Seniors Jonas Brown and Jordan Payne also finished in double figure scoring for ULM, tallying 19 and 18 points, respectively.
ULM went to the free throw line a season-high 38 times, converting on 32 for an 84.2 percent mark from the stripe. Payne finished a perfect 8-for-8 to move his season free throw percentage to 92.1 (35-of-38).
The Warhawks will once again take to the road when they begin a three-game stretch away from Fant-Ewing Coliseum starting with a November 30 game against host Iowa in the Hawkeye Challenge at 8:11 p.m.
