SMU basketball struggles late in loss at UAB

A great start to the second half put the SMU basketball team in position for a big win before the wheels came off in Sunday afternoon’s loss in Birmingham.

It was another double-digit lead in the second half that slipped away. The Mustangs have now lost four of their last five as they head into the American Athletic Conference tournament.

SMU misses out on the double-bye and will have to play in the second round on Thursday.

Score: UAB 74, SMU 70

Record: 20-11, 11-7

Next Game: AAC tournament, 8 p.m. Thursday (ESPNU)

Player of the Game: Zhuric Phelps put together another solid performance putting up a team-high 18 points. He added four rebounds, three assists and two steals in the loss.

Leading Scorers: Phelps (18), Chuck Harris (17), Tyreek Smith (10) and Ja’Heim Hudson (seven points, seven rebounds)

Sequence of the Game: The Mustangs led by as many as 13 points in the second half, but could not make enough shots down the stretch. Over the final six minutes, UAB outscored SMU 22-8. During that time, the Mustangs shot just 2-for-9 from the floor. The struggles reemerged at the free throw line where they were 1-for-4 from the free throw line — including missing the front end of a one-and-one twice — in the final 2:30.

The rest of the story: Neither team was able to get much offense going in the first half. They both shot 35% from the floor, with UAB taking a four-point lead at halftime thanks to an 16-7 advantage in free throw attempts.

In the second half SMU got its offense going and that turned into good defense, which turned into more offense.

The Mustangs came out of halftime on a mission. Over the first nine minutes of the second half, SMU outscored UAB 25-7 to turn a 33-29 halftime deficit into a 54-40 lead. That stretch included a 7-0 run, capped by a Phelps 3-pointer, a 9-0 run that included a Harris 3-point shot and was capped by an Emory Lanier triple.

The offense went cold from there as points became very hard to come by allowing the Blazers to come back to steal the victory, the No. 4 seed and the double-by in the AAC tourney.

Notable Stat I: SMU did not make a shot over the final four minutes, eight seconds of the game, going 0-for-5 over that stretch.

Notable Stat II: It was the fourth game this season that the Mustangs led by double digits in the second half and went on to lose.

Final Word: The Mustangs just didn’t do the things down the final stretch of the game to win. They took shots too early in the shot clock, they took ill-advised shots and they didn’t make free throws.

On Feb. 18, SMU beat Memphis by 29 points for its sixth-straight win. The Mustangs have gone 1-4 since.

Coach Lanier said: “Credit to them, they made some shots, made some plays, made a lot of free throws, which means they got to the free throw line quite a bit. But we had an opportunity on the free throw line on our end as well. We missed several, as well. We missed the front end of a one-and-one and we had an opportunity to take the lead back. I’ll say this, and I said this to the team after our last game, just in the locker room I said, ‘I’m not going to stand up here after a loss like that and say I’m proud of you,’ but I just wanted to get my team back. I felt like we weren’t the same team the last four games or so and the second half of this game I felt like that was the team that had created the energy of our season. I felt like we got that back. Even though we’re disappointed with the outcome, if that team shows up (in the tournament), I like our chances.

“… Instead of having two days off, we’ll take (Monday) off and then we’ll have two days to prepare. It’s really as simple as that. If we had won the game, we would have been off Monday and Tuesday. I really try to give them an opportunity to decompress and we would have had two days to prepare for Friday with the hope that you’re going to play three games in a row, or four in this case, so you have to be really smart about how you manage these next three days.”