COMMERCE— The Texas A&M University-Commerce men's basketball team will face UT Permian Basin on Saturday. The contest will be the final game of the regular season for the Lions. A&M-Commerce lost to UTPB in their first matchup in January.
WHO: Texas A&M-Commerce (18-8, 10-7 LSC) at UT Permian Basin (22-5, 13-4 LSC)
WHERE: UTPB Gymnasium in Odessa, Texas
WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 25 at 4 p.m.
LIVE STATS: http://www.sidearmstats.com/utpb/mbball
LIVE VIDEO: http://utpbfalcons.com/showcase
LIVE AUDIO: www.ketr.org
The Lions are coming off of a narrow 100-98 loss to West Texas A&M on Thursday. While disappointed with the loss, head coach
Sam Walker had nothing but praise for the way his team battled against WT.
"I came into the locker room and told the guys how proud I am of them," he said. "At this time of the year you want to be playing good basketball and we played good basketball [against WT]. We played and we battled all the way through. We had really good production from a lot of people. You look at the stat sheet and we did the types of things that we hadn't been able to do when we lost in the past."
The Lions will now face UT Permian Basin, the team tied for the conference lead. If the Falcons win the game, they will win the Lone Star Conference championship after knocking off Tarleton State on Thursday. Walker knows his team faces an uphill battle against the team ranked No. 3 in the region.
"We are catching them at a bad time," he said. "I hated the Tarleton loss. I didn't want to catch Permian Basin when they are playing to try and win the conference championship on top of protecting their home court. You talk about everybody having talent but not everybody has talent like they have. They have the best when it comes to talent."
The Lions still have an opportunity to finish third in the Lone Star Conference standings when all is said and done Saturday. No matter where the Lions finish, Walker knows the next team on the schedule will be one of the top teams in the region. Six LSC teams are in the top 10 and every single one is battle tested.
"I think the West Texas coach said it last night," Walker said. "He said, 'we don't want to ever play you guys again. I hope we don't see you in the conference tournament.' And I laughed and said, 'who do you want to have?' Nobody wants to play anybody right now. We need to ship some teams in from another conference and play them."
Walker has preached all along that his goal was for his team to be playing good basketball at the end of the season. That is what he is seeing from them now. Although he knows there is still work to do, he is confident in the way his team is playing.
"I'm proud of our bunch," he said. "We've got to keep our heads up and we've got to keep playing and learn from our mistakes. We've got to look at some film and find some different ways to do some things. Whether you win or lose, you've got to go back and watch the film and you have to learn and continue to grow until the last buzzer sounds."
