Texas State Men’s Basketball Comes Up Short Against Islanders

SAN MARCOS, Texas – The Texas State men’s basketball team battled Monday night in the team’s home opener in Strahan Coliseum. However, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi came out on top 73-69.

The Bobcats are now 2-2 on the young season while the Islanders improve to 3-0.

A slow start by Texas State allowed the visitors to take an 8-1 lead a little over four minutes into the game. The lone point for the Bobcats came on a free throw by Nijal Pearson.

Texas State responded with a 12-2 run over the next 5:45. Kavin Gilder-Tilbury netted seven points for the team during the run. The Bobcats stretched their lead to six, the largest of the game, when Maljhum McCrea hit a turnaround jumper and Tyler Blount nailed a three-pointer.

TAMUCC came back and took a 26-24 lead after Cole Martinez made two free throws with just under 12 seconds left on the clock. Marlin Davis was able to find Deris Duncan wide open in the right corner for a trey right before the buzzer sounded to give Texas State a two-point advantage heading into halftime.

In the second half, neither team was able to pull away. The largest lead for the Bobcats came after Nedeljko Prijovic powered his way to a layup at the 12:45 mark to make it 43-39. For the Islanders, they went 20-for-22 at the free throw line in the period that helped them take a 67-60 advantage with just under a minute left in the contest.

Ojai Black made two shots from beyond the arc, his only shot attempts of the ball game, in a 14 second span, to cut the deficit to two. Davis nearly got a steal on the ensuing inbound pass that saw the ball bounce to Pearson for what would have been the game-tying layup. But Davis was whistled for a foul instead and Martinez sunk both of his attempts to steal the game for the South Texas squad.

Gilder-Tilbury just missed his second straight game with a double-double as he led all players with 20 points and nine rebounds. He did become the first Texas State player to score 20 or more points in back-to-back games since Joel Wright did so in March of 2013.

Coming off the bench, Bobby Conley finished 6-of-9 from the field, 2-for-3 from beyond the arc and 5-of-7 at the charity stripe to score a career-high 19 points.

Black finished the game with eight points, three assists and zero turnovers. Dishing out a career and game-high four assists was Maljhum McCrea. The Miami, Florida native also grabbed eight rebounds, five coming on the offensive end, and blocked two shots to tie his career best for the second time this season.

As a team, Texas State shot 44.2 percent (23-of-52) from the field and were 11-for-23 on three-pointers. However, the team converted 63.2 percent (12-of-19) of its free throw attempts and turned the ball over 15 times to TAMUCC’s eight.

The Bobcats are back in action on Friday when the make the trip south down I-35 to UTSA. Tip is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. inside the Convocation Center.

For the latest on Texas State men’s basketball, visit the official website of Texas State athletics at www.txstatebobcats.com, follow the team on Twitter at @TxStateMBB, Instagram at @TxStateMBB and like on Facebook at /TexasStateMensBasketball.

Box Score: http://txstatebobcats.com/boxscore.aspx?path=mbball&id=4731

Danny Kaspar Postgame: https://youtu.be/S1sCeeE8qe4