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Wallace scores 24, UTSA beats Houston Baptist, 87-71

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Freshman guard Keaton Wallace sparked a late offensive surge Saturday night, turning a close game into an 87-71 victory for the UTSA Roadrunners over the Houston Baptist Huskies.

The Huskies had rallied to within five points with 6:26 remaining when Wallace went to work, scoring 13 during a 19-7 streak by the Roadrunners.

When it was over, UTSA held an 83-66 lead with a little more than a minute remaining.

Wallace finished with a season-high 24 for the Roadrunners (6-5) as they snapped out of a two-game losing streak.

Byron Frohnen added 18, and Nick Allen and Deon Lyle produced 13 apiece.

Houston Baptist (3-7) played tough all night, even without starting center Josh Ibarra, who went to the bench two minutes into the game with an apparent ankle injury.

He did not return.

In his absence, freshman forward David Caraher filled the void nicely, producing career-highs of 30 points and 16 rebounds.

Coming off a road trip to New Jersey, where they played St. Peter’s on Wednesday night and then traveled most of the day Thursday, the Huskies forged a lead for 9:03 of the first half.

UTSA trailed by one when it constructed a 13-4 run in the final 3:42 leading into intermission. Frohnen scored six points in that stretch.

“It was kind of a choppy start,” UTSA coach Steve Henson said. “Kind of a choppy game, really. No flow. Couldn’t get anything going. Didn’t shoot it well early and turned it over a lot early.

“But, yeah, we never got our normal flow going. Other than the first half down in the Bahamas, that was the most dis-jointed we’ve looked all year.”

Henson applauded the play of Caraher, who hit 10 of 16 from the field.

“Obviously their freshman player, he killed us,” Henson said. “He’s a good player. He gave us fits.”

Fortunately for Henson, he had an answer in Wallace, a talented freshman lefty who connected on 7 field goals, including 5 of 12 from long distance.

“It’s like he does most nights,” Henson said. “Good player. He’s consistent. Every time he shoots, I think it’s going in. Sometimes I play him when he’s not making shots thinking the next one’s going in.”

Wallace said the Roadrunners knew they were in a “dog fight” late in the game with the Huskies, who play in the Southland Conference.

As a result, the Roadrunners clamped down on the defensive end and then started executing their inside-out game on offense.

“We practice that a lot,” Wallace said. “It’s like, drive and kick. Get to the paint, kick, because, we got a lot of people that can shoot.”

UTSA sophomore Byron Frohnen drives to the bucket for an easy basket. Video: theJBreplay

Gates family reunion

Houston Baptist senior Will Gates, Jr., got off to a fast start with eight points in the first half.

But he was held to 12 for the game on 4 of 9 shooting.

Jalon Gates, his younger brother, came off the bench for the Huskies and was limited to just two points on 1 of 5 shooting.

Afterward, the two brothers and former standouts at Clemens High School met with family and friends in the foyer of the UTSA Convocation Center.

Will Gates, Sr., the players’ father, is a former Chicago playground basketball legend who was featured in the critically-acclaimed documentary, ‘Hoop Dreams.’

Will Gates, Sr., with sons Will, Jr., (left) and Jalon (right) after Saturday night’s game at UTSA. Photo: theJBreplay.com

Boston College holds on to upset top-ranked Duke, 89-84

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Sophomore guard Ky Bowman scored 30 points Saturday as Boston College upset previously undefeated and No. 1-ranked Duke 89-84.

In a tour de force performance, the former high school football and basketball standout from Havelock, North Carolina added 10 rebounds and nine assists in an emotional victory at BC, where fans stormed the court in celebration.

Junior Jerome Robinson (24 points) and Jordan Chapman (22) supported Bowman with stunningly-accurate shooting from long distance.

Robinson and Chapman both hit five 3-point shots for the Eagles, who nailed 15 from long distance. Bowman added three.

Guard Gary Trent, Jr., scored 25 points for the Blue Devils, who fell to 11-1 and to 0-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Boston College (7-3, 1-0) had lost previously to Texas Tech, Providence and Nebraska.

How good was Bowman as a high school football player? Well, according to the Havelock News, he passed on an offer to play for the home-state North Carolina Tar Heels.

UTSA will host ‘Hoop Dreams’ duo tonight at the Bird Cage

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Brothers Will Gates, Jr. (left) and Jalon Gates play for the Houston Baptist Huskies. Courtesy: Houston Baptist athletics

The sons of former Chicago basketball playground legend William Gates, a subject of the critically-acclaimed documentary “Hoop Dreams,” will play in San Antonio tonight.

Senior William Gates, Jr. and his brother, sophomore Jalon Gates, are members of the Houston Baptist University Huskies.

The Huskies (3-6) and the UTSA Roadrunners (5-5) will play tonight at 7 on the UTSA campus, at the Convocation Center.

It’s a homecoming of sorts for the Gates brothers, who both played in high school locally at Clemens.

Gates, Jr., a transfer from Furman, starts for the Huskies and averages 8.7 points on 56.5 percent shooting from the field.

Jalon Gates comes off the bench and averages 9.7 points. Gates leads HBU with 40 percent shooting from three-point distance.

The Gates brothers, both of them guards, will have their hands full with the Roadrunners.

UTSA freshman guard Jhivvan Jackson leads the team in scoring (17.6) and is coming off a 31-point game at Oklahoma.

Jackson and fellow freshman guard Keaton Wallace (14.4) have combined to hit 52 of UTSA’s 104 three-pointers.

TCU edges Nevada, extends winning streak to 15 games

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The 20th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs remained undefeated with an 84-80 victory over No. 22 Nevada on Friday night in Los Angeles.

The Frogs (10-0) have won 15 games in a row dating to last season’s run to the NIT championship.

The 15-game streak is the longest in the nation.

UIW coach says 7-footer set to return on Dec. 22

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The Incarnate Word men’s basketball program learned Thursday that 7-foot center Konstantin Kulikov has been cleared to play this season, starting with a Dec. 22 road game at Florida.

Konstantin Kulikov (Soobum Im / The University of the Incarnate Word)

Kulikov’s status had been in question since October pending a review by the NCAA.

He hasn’t been able to practice or play during UIW’s 4-3 start, and he must sit out upcoming games against Missouri-Kansas City and UTEP, coach Ken Burmeister said.

But the coach said Kulikov will return to practice with the team on Friday, in preparation for his anticipated UIW debut at fifth-ranked Florida.

“We get him back for conference, you know, and that’s important,” Burmeister said.

UIW opens Southland Conference competition on Dec. 28 at McNeese State.

Kulikov is from Oryol, Russia. He comes to UIW with experience playing at a prep academy in Spain, in FIBA-sanctioned tournaments and at San Jacinto Junior College.

At San Jac, he started and averaged 6 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.4 blocks for a squad that went 33-2.

UIW guard Keaton Hervey blocks a shot during the first half Tuesday night. The Cardinals, who rank fifth in the nation with 7.1 blocks per game, are expected to get boost in that department with the return of 7-foot center Konstantin Kulikov. Video: theJBreplay.com

Burmeister, Wacker reflect on an NCAA dream season

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Texas Lutheran coach Mike Wacker (left) and UIW’s Ken Burmeister. (Soobum Im / The University of the Incarnate Word)

Quietly, and with very little fanfare, the 30th anniversary of an iconic moment in San Antonio’s college basketball history is approaching.

Not much has been written or said about it, outside of a few whispers among friends who experienced it first-hand.

But it’s hard to forget the 1987-88 season and the memories of UTSA’s first wild ride in March to an NCAA tournament.

Ken Burmeister. The Incarnate Word men's basketball team opened the season with an 87-71 victory over Southwestern on Friday night. (Joe Alexander / theJBreplay.com)

Incarnate Word’s Ken Burmeister coached UTSA to the 1988 NCAA tournament. (Joe Alexander / theJBreplay.com)

Show the UTSA team picture from that year to Ken Burmeister and Mike Wacker, for instance, and the nostalgia starts to flow freely.

Burmeister, now in his 12th season at Incarnate Word, served as UTSA’s head coach at the time.

Wacker, now leading the program at Texas Lutheran, worked under Burmeister that year on a staff that included Gary Marriott, Glynn Cyprien and David Oliver.

Burmeister and Wacker talked at length about the good times Tuesday night, before UIW hosted and defeated Wacker and Division III TLU, 91-63.

“It was just a dream come true for me, being part of coach Burmeister’s (UTSA) staff, and working with (assistant) coach (Gary) Marriott,” Wacker said. “I mean, those players were just so much fun to be around.

“They worked so hard, and for them to achieve that, under coach B’s leadership, I was just happy to be along for the ride.”

Tournament time

In only the seventh season in program history, UTSA finished third in the Trans America Athletic Conference regular season standings, behind both Georgia Southern and Arkansas-Little Rock, who tied for first.

But when the Roadrunners arrived at Daytona Beach, Florida, for the TAAC tournament, something clicked.

High-scoring forward Frank Hampton got hot, and UTSA won three games in three days at the Ocean Center, knocking off No. 2-seed Little Rock in the semifinals and No. 1 Georgia Southern in the finals.

The sweetest moment may have arrived on the day UTSA played Little Rock.

The Trojans, under Mike Newell, had been a nemesis of the Roadrunners for two seasons, winning all five games they had played.

That’s before Hampton, a UTSA senior from Chicago, erupted for 42 points in a 101-75 victory to eliminate Little Rock.

Another moment in time came a few days later, when No. 14 seed UTSA traveled to Cincinnati to play in the NCAA first round against third-seeded Illinois.

Battling against future NBA first-round draft picks Kendall Gill and Nick Anderson, the Roadrunners played the Big Ten school on mostly even terms before falling 81-72.

Even with those highlights, Burmeister said his most vivid memories of the season centered on the coaching staff’s chemistry and on a senior class that never gave up on itself.

“The staff got along really well together, and we had a really good, experienced team,” the coach said. “We had some older guys. We had four seniors that, when we got to the (TAAC) tournament, they all stepped up for us.

“Every one of them (including Clarence McGee, Lennell Moore and Todd Barnes) contributed to a victory.”

Players bought into a disciplined approach from the start.

Burmeister inherited the approach from his days as an assistant under Lute Olsen at both Iowa and Arizona.

Leaving Arizona, he arrived at UTSA in 1986 stressing attention to detail in practices and in the classroom.

Stressing discipline

Wacker, a former all-conference power forward at Texas, lived in the Chase Hill student apartments so that he keep close tabs on the players.

“When I was there, that was my job, to get ‘em up (in the morning),” Wacker said. “You know, they couldn’t be in their apartments after 8 o’clock.

“I know (coach Burmeister) has got similar stuff in place now (at UIW), and that means he cares about these guys after basketball stops.”

Flanked by his trusted assistants, Burmeister posted a 72-44 record in four years at UTSA. His .621 winning percentage remains as the highest in the school’s 37-year history.

Almost inexplicably, he was fired following the 1989-1990 season after finishing 22-7.

The end of his tenure has been traced to a falling out with Bobby Thompson, the school’s athletic director at the time.

“If our staff had stayed intact, we’d have gotten into the top 20,” said Burmeister, who is 180-138 at Incarnate Word. “We’d have gotten to the (round of) 16 (in the NCAA tournament).

“Unfortunately, there were administrators over there that didn’t want success, and they made a change.”

Hurt feelings aside, nothing will take away from the pride in what the coaches and players accomplished three decades ago.

“We were literally doing it on a shoe-string (budget), as you well know,” said Wacker, who coached 26 years at Judson High School, before taking over at TLU in 2016. “I just think we all had the right attitude for it. Coach B was driven, driven to push us to be the best we could be.

“Really, that’s what he’s always done. It’s what he’s doing here (at UIW).”

Thirty years ago, in the 1987-88 season, the UTSA Roadrunners reached the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the first time. (Courtesy, UTSA)

Burmeister (bottom row, fourth from left, kneeling) and Mike Wacker (bottom row, far left) pose with the team that made history as UTSA’s first NCAA tournament squad.

Texas Lutheran coach Mike Wacker fist-bumps his players before Tuesday night’s game at Incarnate Word. Video: theJBreplay.

Incarnate Word turns up the heat on Texas Lutheran

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Division III Texas Lutheran kept it close for most of the first half Tuesday night before the University of the Incarnate Word pulled away for a 91-63 victory.

Freshman guard Keaton Hervey threw down two highlight-reel dunks and scored 17 points to lead the Cardinals (4-3).

TLU forward Matthew Gillette hit 6 of 6 from the field and scored 12 for the Bulldogs (2-3), who counted the game as an exhibition.

The game featured a match-up between coaching allies Ken Burmeister of UIW and Mike Wacker of Texas Lutheran.

Thirty years ago, the two of them helped lead the UTSA Roadrunners to their first NCAA tournament.

Burmeister was UTSA’s head coach and Wacker was an assistant for the 1987-88 squad that won the Trans America Athletic Conference championship.

Oklahoma beats UTSA, 97-85, as Jackson scores 31

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Oklahoma broke from a five-point lead at halftime Monday night to knock off UTSA 97-85 in Steve Henson’s return to the OU campus.

Henson, UTSA’s second-year head coach, worked for five seasons on OU’s staff before taking the job in San Antonio in 2016.

Freshman Jhivvan Jackson scored 31 points for UTSA. Trae Young, the nation’s leading scorer, produced 28 for Oklahoma.

“We had some good stretches,” Henson told the team’s radio broadcast. “Kind of the same theme. We know we can score in bunches and score in transition.

“We showed that tonight. Just had stretches where we didn’t get enough stops, enough rebounds. The three-pointers (for OU) were killer in the second half on some of the possessions that we guarded pretty well.”

OU (6-1) produced a couple of offensive streaks in the second half that put away the visitors.

Trailing by two, UTSA (5-5) allowed an 8-0 run in a two minute stretch to fall behind 58-48.

The Roadrunners retaliated with back-to-back, three-pointers from Jackson to cut the OU lead to four.

Later, UTSA was within five when Oklahoma produced a 11-0 streak that was fueled by five points from 6-foot-10 sophomore Jamuni McNeace.

Leading scorers

UTSA: Jhivvan Jackson 31, Keaton Wallace 17, Deon Lyle 16, Nick Allen 10.

Oklahoma: Trae Young 28, Jamuni McNeace 15, Christian James 14.

Henson toiled from 2012 through 2016 on Lon Kruger’s staff at OU. Together, Kruger and Henson led the Sooners to at least 20 wins four times.

OU broke through with a trip to the Final Four in 2016.

Tonight, Henson’s Roadrunners (5-4) will play against Kruger’s high-scoring Sooners (5-1) at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

UTSA is playing well. Staying with Oklahoma on the boards early, UTSA is within five points with five minutes left in the half. OU star Trae Young has already scored 15. George Willborn III has six points and five rebounds for UTSA.

As the first half comes to a close, OU takes a 42-37 lead into the dressing room. UTSA will take it. The Roadrunners outscored the Sooners 6-0 in the final 1:38.

Young has scored 18, which is no surprise. He’s averaging a nation-leading 28.8. Freshmen Jhivvan Jackson and Keaton Wallace have scored 9 each.

UTSA leads OU 27-25 on the boards at the break. But the Roadrunners haven’t found a rhythm yet offensively, hitting only 13 of 39 from the field.

Fortunately for UTSA, the Sooners aren’t shooting it much better, connecting on 15 of 37.

The pace of the game has picked up quite a bit early in the second half.

Both teams have started to hit shots. Pace could favor the Sooners, who average an NCAA third-best 94 points per game.

But UTSA is hanging tough with the Big 12 opponent. OU leads 67-59 with 11:55 remaining.

Guard Devonte’ Graham lighting it up for No. 2 Kansas

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Second-ranked Kansas will play on national television twice this week, which is a good thing for fans aching to see more of Jayhawks senior point guard Devonte’ Graham.

The undefeated Jayhawks will take on Washington on Wednesday night in Kansas City, followed by a home game in Lawrence on Sunday against Arizona State.

Graham has been nothing short of sensational lately, scoring 35 in back-to-back victories last week.

In the wake of a 76-60 victory over Syracuse in Miami on Saturday night, Graham took over at the end of the first half in a tight game, scoring 14 in a row.

Afterward, a question was raised about the concept of a point guard on such a talented team taking 17 shots.

“The thing with Devonte’ is, he is a point guard, but he is also a scoring point guard,” Kansas coach Bill Self said, in notes posted on Kansas’ web site. “He’s a guy that can score or make a pass to finish a play.”

Self said it’s not a negative for his team when it goes to Graham for a spark.

“17 (shots) isn’t a lot of shots to get 35 (points),” Self said. “I don’t think that will be a negative at all but I don’t think it will be a nightly thing.

“I think we’re better when we have balance. On a night when we didn’t have anything going on, he needed to do that (score).”

In offensive outbursts against Toledo and Syracuse, Graham became the first Kansas player since Andrew Wiggins in 2014 to score 30 or more points in back-to-back games.

Wiggins scored 41 against West Virginia and 30 against Oklahoma State in March 2014.

Graham, from Raleigh, North Carolina, said he lets the flow of the game dictate when he elects to shoot or pass.

“We’re just trying to be aggressive, and if I can get in the paint and make plays for others, than I’m going to try to do that and make the right plays,” he said. “My shot was just falling tonight (and last game).

“The previous game before that, my shot wasn’t falling as well. It’s just good to see the ball go in.”

Nationally-ranked Baylor looks ahead to Sam Houston State

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Forward Tristan Clark (No. 25), a Baylor freshman from Wagner, competes in the first half Saturday against eighth-ranked Wichita State.

Short-handed Baylor is destined to take a bit of a tumble in the national polls after losing twice last week to ranked opponents.

Ranked 16th in the Associated Press Top 25 at the beginning of last week, the Bears are expected to fall when the new rankings come out Monday morning.

They’ll try to get back in the win column Monday night at home against Sam Houston State.

Buoyed by early-season victories against Wisconsin and Creighton, Coach Scott Drew’s team lost 76-63 on the road against 21st-ranked Xavier last Tuesday.

Forward Terry Maston broke his wrist against Xavier, and the Bears subsequently learned that they will be without him until January.

As a result, Baylor went into Saturday’s home game against eighth-ranked Wichita State with only eight scholarship players.

The Bears put up a good fight but fell 69-62.

Bears guard Manu Lecomte said it’s been tough trying to adjust.

“Huge, it’s been tough lately,” Lecomte said on notes posted to Baylor’s athletics website. “We tried to bring guys in. Ish [Wainright] was here yesterday, and we brought in O[bim Okeke] this week trying to help us.

“Tyson (Jolly) did a great job for us. First game of the year against a top ten team and he did a great job just coming in and did everything he could.”

Despite the manpower shortage, the Bears had the game tied with a little more than three minutes remaining. They couldn’t hang on.

Forward Tristan Clark, a Baylor freshman from Wagner, produced six points and seven rebounds in 29 minutes against the Shockers.

For the season, Clark is averaging 6.6 points and 4.6 rebounds in 20.7 minutes.