SMU Basketball cruises past Tulsa to set up AAC showdown with Houston
SMU Basketball met a pesky Tulsa team and eventually pulled away in the second half Wednesday night inside cozy Moody Coliseum to win, 75-61. The Mustangs secured a 20-win season and set up a huge American Athletic Conference showdown with Houston on Sunday.
Star point guard Kendric Davis scored 15 of his 17 points in the second half as SMU used a 19-1 run to pull away. Davis, who was sick on Tuesday head coach Tim Jankovich said, finished with seven assists on the night.
Forward Marcus Weathers, guard Emmanuel Bandoumel and guard Michael Weathers added 14 points, 14 points and 11 points, respectively. Marcus had a double-double in the first half, the first for SMU in the first half since Jordan Tolbert’s in 2015 against Hampton.
“Make every shot, get every rebound, just unbelievable,” Jankovich said of Marcus Weathers. “I thought he was just fantastic. Hard guy to take out, but we don’t want to kill him. We got to rest a little bit. You think at some point he would not cease to amaze me, but tonight he did it again.”
SMU Basketball held a 30-27 halftime lead before pulling away from Tulsa with a huge second half, scoring 45 points.
“It’s a very good feeling. We know one thing for us is just honing in on defense and just locking down on defense,” Michael said of SMU pulling away. “That’s our identity. we don’t have a lot of big guys, but we have a lot of heart on this team so just us playing with big hearts and playing defense is always going to help us in definitely a lot of games like this one, especially on Sunday, too.”
With 16 seconds to play, Davis was involved in a scuffle after a hard foul by Tulsa on Michael Weathers. SMU guard Emmanuel Bandoumel held off Davis from getting even more involved in the scrum, saving him from a potential suspension.
“We’re looking out for each other, especially like when we saw Mike going down on a hard foul like that,” Bandoumel said. “You want to send a message to the other team, but at the same time, you want to be smart about it. You know, we got a big game coming and it’s the end of the season so we need everybody. We can’t afford nobody to go down like that.”
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Forward Jeriah Horne led Tulsa with 24 points and five rebounds, the only Golden Hurricane to finish in double digits in the contest.
SMU Basketball loses Zhuric Phelps to injury
SMU Basketball did lose guard Zhuric Phelps to a quad injury and Jankovich was thankful it wasn’t a knee. The prognosis was not initially known, though Jankovich was optimistic.
“Not a knee injury, which is what I was really worried about,” Jankovich said. “Something quad, but I don’t know the exact extent or how long he’ll be out. It’s a little early. I think it could have been a lot worse. We don’t know yet. We have to get a lot of things checked out.”
“Everybody bands together. Everybody is one family on this team, everybody’s a brother,” Michael added. “So we treat everybody with the same equal respect and so Zhuric going down, it hurt us, but you know, we got to keep going for him.”
While Phelps left the game and guard Jalen Smith remains out, forward Tristan Clark did return to action. He added seven minutes and had two rebounds and a steal.
SMU Basketball faces off against Houston on Sunday at 11:30 a.m. CT on ESPN.
