By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
After hanging on to beat the North Texas Mean Green 54-50 on Saturday in Denton, the UTSA Roadrunners handed first-year Coach Austin Claunch his biggest win at the school and the 100th of his career.
UTSA’s Austin Claunch hit a milestone with his 100th win as a college head coach. – File photo by Joe Alexander
Center Jo Smith made a clutch defensive stop on North Texas’ last possession, and Raekwon Horton followed by knocking down two free throws with one second remaining to secure the win for the Roadrunners.
Horton finished with a season-high 23 points on eight of 11 shooting in 40 minutes. Primo Spears, battling a sore ankle, finished with 15 points. He hit three of seven from the 3-point arc. Marcus Millender scored 11.
Defensively, Smith finished with three steals and three blocks to lead the Roadrunners, who have posted a 4-3 record in their last seven AAC games.
For North Texas, forward Grant Newell scored a team-leading 14 points on six-for-six shooting. Guard Atin Wright, who scored 22 points against UTSA in the first meeting, was held to 10 on three of 12. Forward Brenan Lorient added 11 points.
Records
UTSA 10-11, 4-5
North Texas 16-5, 7-2
Coming up
Tulane at UTSA, Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Milestone
Claunch is in his first season at UTSA, but he is in his sixth overall in NCAA Division I, which includes five at Nicholls State. The coach posted a 90-61 record at Nicholls, a Southland Conference school in Thibodaux, La. He’s now 10-11 with the Roadrunners, which makes him 100-72 in his career after knocking off North Texas.
Notable
For UTSA, the win was significant on several levels. North Texas entered the game on a six-game winning streak, undefeated at home and tied for first in the American Athletic Conference. UTSA, meanwhile, was tied for ninth.
The Mean Green were 46th nationally on the NCAA’s Evaluation Tool, or, the NET, trailing only Memphis at No. 40 among AAC teams. Meaning, that this was UTSA’s highest-rated victory of the season.
Few could see it coming. Down to only eight scholarship players, UTSA had been pounded 94-74 on Wednesday in Boca Raton, Fla., and came in at No. 222 on the NET. The Roadrunners’ ranking was third to the last among AAC teams on the computer.
Moreover, the Mean Green journeyed to San Antonio on Jan. 18 and walloped the Roadrunners, 72-57. So, as expected, Claunch was feeling good about the outcome of the rematch as he talked to UTSA radio voice Andy Everett in the postgame.
The coach’s defensive scheme seemed to flummox the Mean Green. “We decided to go to some switching (on screens),” he said. “We were just saying, ‘Switch and compete.’ All week. You know, and just kind of man on man.
“They’re a hell of a team. You have so much respect for what they’ve built here. This crowd today, I mean, it was a really, really tough environment.”
The Roadrunners essentially won the game in the first half when they held the Mean Green to 13 points on five of 22 shooting from the field, including zero for 11 from three.
Remarkably, it was a half that resembled the game in San Antonio, except that in the first meeting, UTSA was held to 18 points.
UTSA entered the second half up 27-13.
“You’re giving yourself a cushion because you know they’re making a run,” Claunch said. “You know, similar to the game at our place. We were just able to make a couple of tough plays and shots.
“I think they’re as tough as anybody in the league, and I challenged our guys the last couple of days to embrace that. Embrace the pace. Embrace the physicality, and I think we did that.”