SMU mounts second-half, OT comeback against ECU

It was a tale of two halves on Wednesday night — and included an extra five minutes — as the SMU basketball team put an abysmal first half behind it to come away with a much needed victory against ECU at Moody Coliseum.

Nothing seemed to go in the basket for the Mustangs over the first 20 minutes, but got the offense going early in the second half to begin the comeback. It still took a last-second 3-pointer to send the game to overtime and some nervy moments at the end to complete the comeback and earn the victory.

With the win the Mustangs snap a three-game losing streak and go into the final game of the regular season in position to finish in the Top 4 of the American Athletic Conference and get a bye into the tournament quarterfinals.

Score: SMU 80, ECU 77 (OT)

Record: 20-10, 11-6

Next Game: Sunday at UAB, 2 p.m. (ESPN+)

Player of the Game: On a night when the Mustangs desperately needed offense, and to make shots, Chuck Harris delivered. He made the first two attempts of the second half to get things back on track and would later make a key 3-point shot to put SMU up by a game-high eight and another to pull SMU within one point in the final 30 seconds to help set up overtime. Harris finished with a team-high 16 points.

Leading Scorers: Harris (16), Zhuric Phelps (15), Ricardo Wright (10), Samuell Williamson (six, 13 rebounds)

Sequence of the Game: Trailing by five with three minutes left, the Mustangs finally got going from beyond the arc. Wright and Harris made back-to-back 3-point shots to pull SMU to within one with just over a minute left. Keon Ambrose-Hylton and ECU traded free throws before Phelps delivered the game-tying 3-pointer from the top of the arc. That momentum carried into the extra five minutes as Wright hit another 3 and Ambrose-Hylton scored for a five-point lead as the Mustangs never looked back.

The rest of the story: With the game tied at 9, the Mustangs would not make another shot over the next nine minutes, 43 seconds and wouldn’t score for 7:11 of that with the only two points coming from free throws. During that time, ECU went on an 11-0 run to take control of the game.

SMU answered with a 10-0 run in the second half that put it ahead for the first time all game. The lead would reach eight points on a Harris 3. But once again points would be hard to come by as ECU went on a 15-2 run to take the lead right back.

That’s when SMU made its final push at the end of regulation and kept it going in the second half.

Notable Stat I: SMU shot just 21.6% in the first half, going 8-of-37, including 2-of-11 from the 3-point line.

Notable Stat II: SMU opened the game 4-for-20 from the 3-point line, but made four-straight from the final 2:30 of regulation into overtime, including Phelps’ first make in eight attempts from beyond the arc to tie the game in the final seconds.

Notable Stat III: The Mustangs were 24-for-29 from the free throw line, including a perfect 10-for-10 by Phelps.

Final Word: It wasn’t pretty, at all. But it was a much-needed win to avoid a four-game losing streak and limping into the conference tournament.

Coach Lanier said: “It’s not the way we drew it up, but we obviously were in need of a win. And it certainly was a tough one to come by really proud of the group. I felt like the last 10 days or so, we were feeling sorry for ourselves. … We didn’t level up, so to speak. And so in the aftermath of that disappointment, we just couldn’t get that off of us. And it wasn’t until Monday of this week that I felt like I had my team back. I was missing those guys. They always come in, they play hard and all that, but there’s a certain confidence and spirit that we’ve played with for the vast majority of the year that we had been missing.

“It was missing in the first half again. And I was surprised and disappointed because on the practice floor Monday and Tuesday I felt like we had a little bit of that juice back. And I was expecting to see that and we got some of it in the second half, thankfully, at home and our backs were against the wall and we found a way to win a game that we really needed.”