Saturday, March 5 was Senior Day for the Lions Basketball team as seniors Gary Dixon, Rodney Jones, Jason Marks, Trent Hutchin and David Ndoumba played their final home game against Nicholls State at the University Center  at noon, winning the game 50-43.

The win secured them a place in the Southland Conference Tournament, which began Wednesday, March 9 in Katy, Texas, as well as secured a three-game winning streak for the team.

The Lions and Colonels kept neck-and-neck throughout the first half, with neither team gaining more than five points over the other and the lead changing five times.

The game started out with a five-point lead by Nicholls before the Lions caught up with a layup by Trent Hutchin and a three-pointer by Brandon Fortenberry, after which both teams kept battling it out.

Senior forward Jason Marks led the Lions through the first half, scoring seven of the 23 points earned by the team. Justin Ayers and Anatoly Bose led the Colonels; scoring seven points in the first half.

“It was a grinder,” said head coach Jim Yarbrough. “There were not very many surprises on offense, they know each other very well.”

The coach described having to rely on defense for the game because of this familiarity between the two teams.

“Defense won it for us. Nonstop it was about team defense.”

The first half ended with the score at 23-21 in favor of the Lions.

The second half began as close as the first with Nicholls scoring the first points, but the Lions got ahead with two free throws by junior guard Deshawn Patterson. The Lions finally began to pull further ahead with free throw shots by junior guard Brandon Fortenberry and freshman guard Jeremy Campbell at 12:33 and 12:05 in the second half, making the score to 32-25.

“We were trying to pull away from them,” said Fortenberry. “If we did that, we could get them to play on our terms.”

The Lions were not able to maintain the large point lead that they wanted with their largest lead being 12 points at 10:12; however they did not allow the Colonels to gain the lead at all after tying at 9:11 in the second half.

Marks noted that part of the Lion’s strategy was to pull together on who the team assessed as Nicholl’s best player and SLC leading scorer, Bose, who managed to lead Nicholls with 15 points throughout the game.

“We pulled together on the team effort,” said Marks. “You just keep your energy up and make stops, and we did make stops.”

Fortenberry was able to score 10 points in the second half and gained the last two points in free throws with 19 seconds left, finalizing the score.  

The win over the Colonels earned the Lions the five seed in the SLC tournament in Katy TX,  granting them a quaterfinals match versus the four seed Texas State. In an up and down game the Bobcats would pull away late with two free throws  for a 72-68 victory and ending the Lions season with a record of 15-14 record.