Jags advance to semifinals of the Sun Belt Tournament

Matt and I attended all four games held at the Mitchell Center yesterday. The first game was South Alabama and the University of New Orleans. UNO was pesky and stayed in the mix the entire game. Only with 10 seconds left did the game really look like USA was going to pull out the win.

The Jags avoided a repeat of last years embarrassing upset in the quarterfinals. UNO put the Jags on the charity stripe 49 times throughout the game. With the Jags hitting 37 of them. Brandon Davis scored 27 leading the Jags scoring.

Bo McCalebb scored 25 for the UNO Privateers, adding to his nations leading active careering scoring numbers. This puts him ahead of names like Wayman Tisdale and David Robinson to make it to 21st in the history of the NCAA.

This also pushes the Jags record in the Mitchell Center to 17-0 for the season.

In other games that I saw yesterday, Middle Tennessee State outlasted Troy. MTSU played a solid game holding off a couple runs by Troy, but in the end the lack of an inside game and missed 3's doomed them in the end.

Arkansas-Little Rock topped Florida Atlantic 66-60 despite only going 14-32 from the free throw line. Neither team looked particulary good. It was after the 10 minute mark in the first half before either team made it to double digits in scoring.

The final game of the night was Western Kentucky Hilltoppers and North Texas. WKU dominated the game from the tipoff pretty much. The lead by UNT was short lived. A late rally from 20 points down was stopped by strong defensive play and missed shots.

The officiating was pretty bad for all four games. I'm not a referee, nor do I have the urge to be one (especially in basketball). But there were a lot of bad calls. Hopefully the officiating will get better.

Now, I have to note that the mascot for WKU is quite puzzling. He is some sort of red blob thing. Most of the time people were wondering what he was supposed to be calling him an ink stain, blood clot or just plain ugly.


Plus Hilltoppers? Just because they sit on top of a hill. If your school sits in a valley, you wouldn't call your team the valleywags would you? These guys must not be too creative.

The only thing worse is the Stanford Tree mascot.
Just sad.