JUCO BASKETBALL: Miguez’s hot hand carries LSCPA

Published 10:56 pm Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Lamar State sports information

BAYTOWN — The Seahawks made the plays when they had to Wednesday night and brought a 78-75 Region XIV win over Lee College home to Lamar State College Port Arthur.

“I always tell my guys it’s a game of runs and that’s what this one was today,” LSCPA coach Lance Madison said minutes after his team improved to 8-11 on the season, 2-7 in conference. “It was a good win for us.”

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The Seahawks were up-and-down in handing Lee College its sixth loss in a row and fourth by five or fewer points.

With Nederland sophomore Jase Miguez scoring 16 of his game-high 22 points in the first half, the Seahawks turned an early 14-point (20-6) deficit into a 13-point (44-31) lead at intermission, outscoring their hosts 38-11 in the final 12 minutes of the opening period.

But the Seahawks, who hadn’t played in six days because of last week’s freeze, went into a collective brain freeze after upping their lead to 18 points (54-36) on Miguez’s buzzer-beating jumper with 14:45 left in the game.

Madison’s team committed 15 turnovers in the second half, including six in one seven-possession stretch. Lee College hit a total of eight second-half three-pointers and got within one point four different times in the final eight minutes, at 56-55, 59-58, 69-68 and 76-75.

It was 71-68 with 1:32 remaining when Seahawk point guard Tevin Baker, a freshman from Beaumont, shook off an earlier string of three straight turnovers and made a key steal and hit a pair of free throws for a five-point lead with 1:02 left.

It was 75-68 when Beaumont sophomore Rodney Brown scored on a layup off a feed by Houston freshman Alex Williams.

But then Brown missed a free throw and Williams hit only one of two freebies as Lee College fought back with a pair of three-balls by Collin Means, the Rebels’ leading scorer with 20.

It was a one-point game with 14 seconds left. In the final 10 seconds, Baker missed two free throws for LSCPA but Silsbee sophomore Travious Grubbs blocked a layup try by Lee College and Brown snared the rebound as the clock ran out.

Officials ruled there was 0.8 second left, so Brown went to the foul line and hit two for the game’s final margin. Lee College’s Ezecha Santiago bobbled the inbounds pass as the buzzer sounded for a final time.

“Jase Miguez came in and gave us a real good lift,” Madison said of the first half. “He did a good job of backdoor cutting to the basket and Stefan [Radosavljevic] did a good job of getting him the ball. Stefan played a real good ballgame. He’s sound, a big guy who can move and pass the ball pretty well.”

Radosavljevic, a 6-foot-9 sophomore from Serbia, scored a total of 21 points, 10 coming in the first half. He and Miguez assisted one another’s inside game, working the ball around Lee College defenders.

Brown, returning to the lineup after missing most of the past two games with an injury, scored 11 points and Grubbs added eight markers for LSCPA.

The second-half lull didn’t surprise the Seahawks coach.

“I knew we’d come out a little flat, having been off a week,” Madison said. “I knew Lee would come out with a sense of urgency. Give Lee credit. They were able to hit shots and come back.”

The Seahawks will try for their first home win of the conference season Saturday, when they host Blinn College at 4 p.m. in the Carl Parker Center.

Although LSCPA and Lee College (now 7-13 overall) both entered Wednesday’s game with a single conference win in eight tries, both clubs are still in the chased for the postseason out of the South Zone because they each still have 10 games remaining against fellow South Zone teams.

A single round-robin against North Zone teams to open conference play was dominated thoroughly by those seven clubs. Going into Wednesday’s play no South Zone team had more than three wins in the league and no North Zone team had fewer than three wins.

The top four teams in each zone advance to the Region XIV tournament at the end of the season.