By Gene Schallenberg
After coming off a pair of impressive victories against Oral Roberts and Rider last week in the Cancun Challenge, the Bearkats return to Johnson Coliseum tonight, where they’ll face Mid-America Christian.
“Those were two good teams, Oral Roberts and Rider,” Sam Houston State head coach Bob Marlin said Sunday. “We felt they were as good as any team we’ve played outside of Kentucky. We played good basketball in the second half of both of those games. Hopefully, that will carry over into the next game.”
Sam Houston State (4-2) lost to then-fourth-ranked Kentucky 102-92 on Nov. 19 and Cleveland State 80-68 in the first leg of the tournament, which was held stateside. Against Oral Roberts and Rider in Cancun, Mexico, the Bearkats trailed in the second half of each game, but stepped it up down the stretch to close out the tournament with a pair of wins.
Marlin added that the competition was similar to what SHSU would face in the Southland Conference tournament.
“(Oral Roberts and Rider) are very comparable,” the coach said. “Tommy Dempsey, the coach at Rider, and I are friends and we said before the game that we’re glad to play each other. They had beaten Mississippi State and we had beaten Oral Roberts. We felt like it would help our RPIs. We also said it was like a conference tournament game. That’s the way it was. It was a hard-fought game.
“It was a good experience for our basketball team. We got better defensively and we got better offensively in the halfcourt.”
While the frontcourt had its share of challenges in the Cancun tournament, the guards will be tested in tonight’s game against the Evangels.
“Mid-America Christian is small,” Marlin said. “They’re small and quick. These guys are capable of getting off a lot of shots on the perimeter because they do have good quickness. They’re not the biggest group we’re going to play. We should have a size advantage inside and we need to take advantage of that on the backboards, similar to what Kentucky did against us.”
Mid-America Christian has a pair of sophomore guards in Brandon Williams and Charlie Shorter who have been hard to stop this season.
“Brandon Williams is a very good shooter, as well as Charlie Shorter,” Marlin said. “In the last game, they had some other guys step up and play really well. Those two guards have been their best guys to date. They’ve got a good basketball team.”
