Senior forward Jordan Capps scored 21 points against Northwestern State University to set up the Lion's 13th conference win of the season. File Photo/The Lion's Roar

The men’s basketball team made program history by winning the most road games this season with an 86-62 win against Northwestern State University.

Head Coach Jay Ladner described the players and staff’s reaction.

“We’re certainly excited about this as we continually build our program in a positive way, hit these milestones,” said Ladner. “It’s always a good thing to happen. I just think it’s a byproduct of the process, and it seems like every game we’re doing something either that has never been done or hasn’t been done in a long time. So, that’s exciting.”

While the team is happy with the achievement and recognition, they aim to set higher goals.

“It’s exciting that our players and coaching staff are being recognized in such a positive way, but we don’t want to be satisfied with that,” said Ladner. “We want to continue to set the bar higher and continue to strive each and every year to better what we’ve done in the prior year. This is my fourth year here, and we’ve been able to kind of do that each year. That’s very gratifying.”

Ladner discussed how this year’s team was the first to achieve their accolades during his four years with the university.

“I think that we have a very talented group of young men, and the second thing is we have a number of players that have been in our program now for a few years,” said Ladner. “That key component to all this is experience. They have the experience of playing tough games, tough schedules and playing on the road. So I think we have a talented team, but I also think we have good experience and good character on our team with these young men.”

The Demons have been a longtime rival of the team, and the win over them was welcomed with much enthusiasm.

“We were very concerned,” said Ladner. “Northwestern is the longest playing series historically versus Southeastern. They’ve played Northwestern the most times of any team since the inception of the basketball program at Southeastern. We have not had, over the course of the history, great success playing at Northwestern.”

Redshirt freshman small forward Brandon Gonzalez scored career high 15 points. He explained how he felt about his performance.

“I didn’t think to much of it,” said Gonzalez. “I was so fixated on the win. My teammates actually told me how much I scored and that I played well, but it did give me a good confident feeling when I thought about it the next day.” 

Ladner was pleased with Gonzalez’s performance.

“Absolutely really excited about Brandon and his future,” said Ladner. “We feel like Brandon has the potential, if he’ll continue to work as hard as he’s been working, by the time he’s a junior or senior, to be an all-conference type player.”

Ladner explained his theory on why the team solidarity in the conference this season has fluctuated.

“That’s a good problem to have, meaning that it’s very difficult first off to win Division I level at all, but I think we’ve had to learn from some mistakes,” said Ladner. “What we have to realize is we have to play with great intensity and focus, and when we haven’t done that. There’s such a razor thin margin to determine victory or defeat that if we haven’t been quite at 100 percent on our game, then we haven’t been successful. Then we’ll bounce back. That’s what I like about our team. We’ll bounce back. I think we’ve won six in a row now, and I think that we’ve learned from prior games what it takes to win, and that’s part of the process too.”

The program staff and players work as a team to eliminate their shortcomings. Ladner believes this attention to detail and desire to improve their play led to the team’s success.

“We’ve gotten much better defensively over the course of the season, individually and as a team,” said Ladner. “I think that’s one of the big reasons we’ve been so successful. I think that defensively we give up the fewest points of any team in the league as compared to the other teams.”

The team has two more games of the season against the University of New Orleans and Nicholls State University. If the team wins both, they will become conference champions. The match against UNO is an away game held on Feb. 28. The final match against Nicholls State will be a home game with a tailgate before the game. Ladner talked about the skill level of their upcoming opponents.

“We’ve got two very tough games against two really good teams that are well coached well prepared,” said Ladner. “These are high stake games, and it’s exciting to be playing a high stakes game this late in the season because that means we’ve had a good year. But we expect two really, really hard fought games like I said high stakes and highly motivated opponents. So it will be a great test for us.”

Ladner believes these last two games will push the team further than they have all season.

“We’ve got a lot to play for ourselves,” said Ladner. “Our guys have been doing a great job meeting all of the challenge, and this is certainly going to be two of the biggest challenges we’ve had all season.”

While the team has been earning wins in the conference, the program had an off the court incident last week. Redshirt senior forward James Currington was shot in an isolated incident near the University Center. Currington survived the shooting. Ladner discussed his thoughts on the incident.

“One, it’s just a terribly tragic situation for all involved, and there are some young men who have made some very poor choices that are going to affect them for the rest of their lives,” said Ladner, “It altered our team in a sense that one of our players is out and received a gunshot wound, and this is something that is a problem all over our country, and how people are settling disputes with guns and they end up making mistakes.”

Ladner described his thoughts on the loss to the team.

“Obviously, James is always a part of our family and is a big loss to our team to not have him there,” said Ladner. “He’s one of those experienced guys we were talking about. So hopefully, we can turn a negative into a positive. We’re in the business of teaching young men lessons, and hopefully, this is a lesson others will not associate with our program.”