SMU can't overcome offensive struggles at FAU

SMU led for most of the first half, but once Florida Atlantic took the lead with just under four minutes left in the first half it was theirs for good.

The Mustangs would trail by four at halftime and would never get closer than six points in the second half. They shot under 33% in the second half and under 40% for the game, including 6-for-22 from the 3-point line.

SMU’s six-game winning streak and perfect record in February both came to an end. It was just the second time this season the Mustangs have lost by double digits.

Score: FAU 80, SMU 70

Record: 19-8, 10-4

Next Game: at USF, 11 a.m. Sunday (ESPN2)

Player of the Game: On a night when SMU wasn’t able to get much of anything going inside, Keon Ambrose-Hylton was. He finished with 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting and was 3-of-4 from the free throw line. Ambrose-Hylton led with five rebounds to go with a block and a steal.

Leading Scorers: Zhuric Phelps (15), Chuck Harris (15, three assists), Ambrose-Hylton (11, five rebounds).

Sequence of the Game: The Mustangs used a 9-0 run from 13:25 to 11:23 in the first half to pull out to a six-point lead. The two teams would trade buckets with Phelps hitting a jumper with 8:53 left putting SMU back up by six at 26-20. From there, FAU went on a 7-0 run to get the lead back. Jalen Smith would try to keep the Mustangs ahead with a 3-pointer and then a pair of free throws, putting them back up by two points each time. But a Johnell Davis layup with 3:54 left in the half put the Owls up for good.

The rest of the story: The Mustangs held their own for the first 16 minutes of the game, but just didn’t make enough shots or play good enough defense to earn a road win in a tough environment against a motivated FAU team, coming off a close loss to in-state rival USF on Sunday.

Notable Stat I: After combining for 44 points in Sunday’s rout of Memphis, Samuell Williamson and Ricardo Wright combined for three points on 0-of-10 shooting from the floor Thursday. All three came from Wright and all three from the free throw line.

Notable Stat II: The Mustangs had been a force on the glass, especially in offensive rebounds leading to second-chance points. But it was FAU dominating that stat line, outrebounding SMU 43-37, with a 15-13 advantage on offensive rebounds that turned into a 25-8 advantage in second-chance points. Most of that came from Vladislav Goldin who had a game-high 21 points on the night.

Notable Stat III: The loss drops SMU into sole possession of fourth place in the AAC standings, just 1/2 game ahead of UAB.

Final Word: This was a chance for the Mustangs to build on Sunday’s dominating win against Memphis and pick up a signature win on the road against a Final Four team that remained almost fully intact from last year to this year. Instead, some of the old bad habits returned as the ball didn’t move much — five assists on 24 made shots — shots didn’t fall and defense was suspect at times. Even though FAU has had its issues this season, it’s still a really good, veteran team that has the experience of a deep tournament run and the Mustangs looked like a team that is still trying to figure some things out. The loss effectively takes SMU out of the running to claim the regular season AAC title, although that was a long shot anyway. The key is not letting this loss snowball down the stretch run of the regular season.

Coach Lanier said: “They played with the appropriate level of desperation coming off a tough loss and they ramped it up a notch. You could tell they were fired up for this game and we knew that and it was on us to respond and the response wasn’t quite good enough. … Great test for us right now, how we respond. I liked the energy toward the end. We had cut it to six, I think Emory (Lanier) hit a 3 in the corner that might have cut it to six, then we gave up multiple 50-50s, offensive rebounds that led to 3s. As the game went on we had less and less margin for error and we had too much error.”