Russell Harrison drive vs South Alabama 2021 Sun Belt Championship
Sun Belt Conference
72
La.-Monroe ULM 7-19,5-13 Sun Belt
80
Winner South Alabama USA 17-10,10-7 Sun Belt
La.-Monroe ULM
7-19,5-13 Sun Belt
72
Final
80
South Alabama USA
17-10,10-7 Sun Belt
Winner
Score By Periods
Team 1 2 F
La.-Monroe ULM 46 26 72
South Alabama USA 44 36 80

Game Recap: Men's Basketball |

Cold-Shooting ULM Eliminated from SBC Championship by USA, 80-72

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Michael Flowers scored a season-high 34 points to lead South Alabama to an 80-72 win over ULM Friday in the first round of the Sun Belt Conference Championship. Flowers, who scored 18 consecutive points for the Jaguars during one second-half stretch, outscored the entire ULM team over the final 20 minutes, 29-26.
 
There were nine ties and 13 lead changes in the first half alone of this tightly contested first-round game.
 
ULM (7-19) got a dunk from Thomas Howell while Josh Nicholas followed with a 3-pointer from the right wing and a 15-foot fall-away jumper from the left baseline as the Warhawks took a 19-15 lead with 11:06 left in the first half. Nicholas buried another 3 from the left wing and Koreem Ozier hit the first of two free-throw attempts as ULM built a 25-19 lead with 7:40 to play. The six-point margin was the largest enjoyed by either team in the opening half.
 
South Alabama (17-10) claimed a 40-37 advantage on Jamal West's three-point play with 2:25 on the clock. Russell Harrison's 17-foot, pull-up jumper at the first-half buzzer sent the Warhawks to the locker room with a 46-44 lead.
 
ULM put together a 9-2 run midway through the second half and took its largest lead at 65-57 on Elijah Gonzales' 3-pointer from the right wing with 8:54 remaining.
 
Flowers scored the next 14 points as South Alabama turned an eight-point deficit into a 71-65 lead on his 3 from the left wing with 5:14 left. His 3-pointer from 25-feet straightaway gave USA its biggest lead at 76-67 with 4:01 to go. The Jaguars outscored ULM, 19-2, during a stretch of 4:33 in the second half. The Warhawks missed nine consecutive field-goal attempts and went 5:17 between made field goals.
 
ULM cut its deficit to five points at 77-72 on a layup from Gonzales with 44 seconds on the clock, but USA converted 3-of-4 free-throw attempts to ice the game.
 
"It was a very hard-fought game by both teams to open up the conference tournament," ULM head coach Keith Richard said. "Both teams really competed the entire game. We simply didn't have enough offense in the second half to keep up with them. In the first half, we scored 46 points. In the second half, we scored 26. At halftime, we lost Josh Nicholas, a double-figure scorer for us, to an ankle injury. You take him out of the equation, and we just couldn't keep up offensively.
 
"Obviously, Michael Flowers flexed himself out there in the second half. Flowers showed why he's one of the better players in the league, if not the best. He took his team on his shoulders and turned that game around. We just didn't have enough scoring to comeback.
 
"The biggest difference in the second half was how Flowers approached the ball-screen plays," Richard continued. "With the way we were guarding it in the first half, he was giving the ball up. In the second half, he was a lot more hard-headed about keeping the ball in his hands as we defended those ball screens. Flowers made some tough, mid-range shots in one-on-one situations and that really got him going. He's a really good player. He's hard to guard one-on-one, and sometimes, he's difficult for two to guard. Flowers put on a show tonight.
 
"We tried pushing up on the ball screens a little bit coming out of a timeout and that worked a time or two, but again, Flowers started rejecting the screen and going the other way one-on-one. The bottom line is we needed to keep scoring on our end until he cooled off a little bit. When he finally cooled off, we cut it to 76-70, but we didn't have enough scoring to overtake them at the end."
 
The Jaguars connected on 10-of-21 field-goal attempts (48 percent) in the second half, including 5-of-10 3-pointers (50 percent). ULM shot just 28 percent (10-of-36) from the floor after the intermission, including 3-of-13 from behind the 3-point arc (23 percent).
 
"Defensively, South Alabama played a lot of diamond-and-one where they face-guarded one guy," Richard said. "In the first half, they started off doing it against Russell Harrison, then late in the half, they switched to Koreem Ozier. They mostly continued to do it against Koreem in the second half. We were prepared for all of that. For us to have an opportunity to win this game, we needed other players to step up and score.
 
"As you look at the stat sheet, Josh Nicholas was the only other perimeter player to score (eight points) in the first half. Outside of Josh, the rest of our shooting percentages weren't very good. We took some bad shots, but we had a lot of good looks too. We shot less than 30 percent from the field in the second half. We needed to make a much high percentage of those shots to combat what South Alabama was doing defensively. Unfortunately, too many of those good looks didn't go down."
 
The Warhawks, who outrebounded USA 41-38, also held an edge in points in the paint, 30-16; second-chance points, 11-7; and bench scoring, 24-16.
 
In the second half, Flowers hit 8-of-11 shots from the floor, including 5-of-6 3s, and 8-of-9 free-throw attempts while accounting for 29 of USA's 36 points.
 
Three other Jaguars scored in double figures, including Sam Iorio, who scored 12 first-half points, followed by Kayo Goncalves and Tyreke Locure, who added 10 each.
 
Gonzales paced the Warhawks with 14 points while Harrison recorded his fourth double-double of the season with 13 points to go along with a season-best 13 rebounds. Marco Morency collected a season-high 14 rebounds, including four offensive boards.
 
With the victory, South Alabama advances to face the Ragin' Cajuns in the Sun Belt Conference Championship quarterfinals on Saturday, March 6 at 5 p.m.
 
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