By Cody Stark
Assistant Sports Editor
KATY — At this stage in the game, a win is a win.
Sam Houston State survived a stellar performance from a one-man wrecking crew Wednesday to advance to the semifinals of the Southland Conference tournament. The top-seeded Bearkats held on and beat upset-minded Nicholls 62-57 at the Merrell Center.
The Bearkats (23-7) had trouble containing Colonels forward Anatoly Bose, who scored a game-high 40 points. But senior point guard Ashton Mitchell made some key plays down the stretch and knocked in two free throws with four seconds left to seal the win.
The loss knocked eighth-seeded Nicholls (11-19) out of the tournament. Sam Houston will face Southeastern Louisiana, a 79-78 overtime winner over Texas State, in the semifinals tonight at 8:30.
“That’s a pretty good eight seed, huh?” Bearkats head coach Bob Marlin said. “They have a nice team and they played hard. We got into foul trouble in the first half, trying to guard their cutters, and it wound up that (Gilberto) Clavell and Preston (Brown) had to sit long stretches of the first half.
“... In the second half we had the chance to get the lead out a couple of times and couldn’t do it. But again, give Nicholls credit. They played extremely hard.”
Sam Houston grabbed a five-point lead at the half, but couldn’t pull away from the Colonels. Bose hit two consecutive layups around a free throw from Bearkats junior Josten Crow, to help Nicholls take its largest lead since the opening minutes of the game, 43-41 with 11:24 to go.
That’s when Mitchell began to shine for Sam Houston.
The first-team All-SLC point guard was held to just five points in the first half because of foul trouble, but Mitchell drilled a 3-pointer to put the Bearkats back up 44-43.
Mitchell, who finished with a team-high 20 points, later hit two straight layups, one coming off a steal from Crow (12 points), that sparked an 8-0 run to make it 52-45 with 6:26 to go. Clavell (12 points) also hit a layup and senior Corey Allmond hit two free throws, his only points of the game, during the game’s key spurt.
Having been a part of a Sam Houston team which has been bounced in the opening round of the SLC tournament twice out of the previous three seasons, Mitchell willed the Bearkats to victory. He scored seven points in the final four and a half minutes.
“I wanted to win it real bad. This is my last shot,” Mitchell said. “I have been here four years, and three years I have been knocked out. In the second half I just told coach, ‘I want the ball in my hands. Just leave me with the ball.’ I’m just glad that we got the win as a team.”
The second half turned into a battle of first-team All-SLC selections. As good as Mitchell was, Bose single-handedly kept the Colonels within striking distance.
The Sydney, Australia native hit back-to-back buckets to close the gap to 52-49 with just under six minutes to go. He also hit two 3s in the final three and a half minutes, the final with six seconds to go to make it a three-point game.
It just wasn’t enough. Nicholls second-leading scorer was Fred Hunter, who finished 36 points off of Bose’s total.
But the style of play was exactly what the Colonels needed to stay close. It was physical and Nicholls did a good job making it a half-court game with its defense. The Bearkats couldn’t get out and run and finished with only four fast-break points.
“They only scored four fast-break points,” Bose said. “At our place when we played them, they got a lot of transition buckets.
“Coming into this game, we tried to focus on taking that away and playing half-court basketball, which is what we did on the defensive end. I’m really proud of the guys and there effort.”
With Clavell and Brown on the bench in foul trouble for most of the first half, the Bearkats got a huge boost from backups Marco Cooper and Arthur Zulu to weather the storm and keep the lead at the break.
Zulu hit a layup and three free throw, two coming with 1:20 left, to put Sam Houston up 30-25. Cooper added a layup with 30 seconds left, but Bose answered at the buzzer to send the game into the half.
The Bearkats shot 50 percent from the field, but only hit 27 percent from long range.
“Around this time everybody plays tough defense,” Crow said. “We know what each is going to do, so we have to execute and shoot a little bit better. But as a whole, everybody wants to win. That is what you saw out here tonight.
“... Nicholls is a great team, but we are going to have to play better the next couple of games. Tonight we got it done and we will look forward to the next one.”
