SMU pulls away in second half to top East Carolina, 80-66
SMU Basketball pulled away from East Carolina in the second half thanks to a career-high 23 points from guard Emmanuel Bandoumel. Bandoumel stepped up for head coach Tim Jankovich’s team and he did it on both ends of the floor. The 80-66 win gave the Mustangs the No. 1 spot in the American Athletic Conference standings.
“We always say this. We put him on the best guy a lot and he is not a guy you want guard you I’m just telling you do not want him,” Jankovich said on the SMU Postgame Radio Show. “He is quick. He’s a spidery guy. He’s smart, he’s athletic, and he pays a lot of attention to scouting report, which all our guys are. I’m so proud of these guys.”
When SMU guard Kendric Davis went out with an injury for a bit of game time, SMU Basketball needed to refocus on its intensity. The Pirates were pesky and the Mustangs had to answer, which they did.
“That’s what we were getting on them pretty hard at one of the timeouts that they are they’re out fighting us,” Jankovich said. “They want the game where as it can’t be that way. They’re getting more rebounds, more 50-50 balls, we kind of reached for a couple and we’re not diving, and then it changed. Our normal competitors came to the front and did just one heck of a job.”
SMU Basketball handles success, takes care of business
With the road test up next, SMU Basketball didn’t have the luxury of looking back on its win over Houston earlier in the week. Jankovich saw his team stay the course and grab a win.
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“To have that much emotion, have all the positivity that comes with it, everybody patting you on the back and feeling like well, you’ve already climbed the mountain and this game’s is cruel,” Jankovich said. “You you look across the country, college basketball is a very cruel world. Just when you think everything’s fine, somebody jumps up and does something and for us to play the way we did, I’m telling you, I couldn’t be more proud, not surprised. These are some competitive guys.
“They are hungry. They’ve not lost their hunger. They don’t feel like we’ve accomplished near what we want to, which is a beautiful thing. I’m just having a lot of fun coaching them.”
SMU Basketball heads to Temple on Wednesday at 8 p.m. CT for another key matchup in the AAC, which will be televised on ESPNU. Like against the Pirates, Jankovich wants his team focused on the task at hand and not at the AAC standings.
“I don’t want to get too carried away. I like being the chaser a little bit. That’s why we don’t bring it up in the locker room,” Jankovich said of the standings. “We keep bringing up we want to get national respect. We want to get ranked. That’s all we’re talking about. You start putting too much thought into the race and you’re not maybe focused enough. I like them narrow. I want the only thing on your mind is we’re at East Carolina, we got to figure out how to win this game.”
