There was a moment during pregame layup lines Monday evening when Dave Simmons noticed the quiet. His McNeese State team silently cycled through its established routine, still donning the black, defensive-oriented warmup shirts assistant coach Preston David designed.
“Our guys were quiet the whole time and in our pregame talk and everything else,” the Cowboys coach explained. “(Stephen F. Austin) had a lot of energy so I told them ‘(Speak) softly and carry a big stick.’”
The team, with nine freshmen and sophomores, stared blankly back at its leader. Few, if any, knew of the adage Theodore Roosevelt politicized and introduced to the American lexicon in the early 1900s.
Simmons explained its rudimentary meaning. The team, in turn, adhered to the axiom, ending the Lumberjacks’ 26-game Southland Conference winning streak with a 69-54 win to start 2-0 in conference play for the first time since 2013-14.
“I knew they were focused,” Simmons said. “We got two games down and it’s a long road. We beat a good team and now you have a big target on your back now because you’re the first one to beat the defending champs. That speaks for itself.”
The win, Simmons’ first against Stephen F. Austin since 2012, was a departure from so many of McNeese’s early season losses — games where the Cowboys looked listless in the face of an opponent’s strongest runs.
Stephen F. Austin’s came with 11:06 left, following Kalob Ledoux’s corner 3-pointer put the Cowboys up 48-32. Three straight Lumberjacks possessions yielded buckets, cutting the lead to 10 before Jamaya Burr drove the lane and made an extra pass to a cutting Lance Potier, who converted the open layup to quell the run.
This was, of course, the same Cowboys team that, one month ago Tuesday, held a 14-point lead against UL-Lafayette. It did not make a shot for the final 6:28 of the first half, turning the ball over in a frazzled mess while the Ragin Cajuns reeled off a game-sealing 28-1 run.
“It’s the patience, it’s not getting rattled,” forward Stephen Ugochukwu said. “In the past, when they made that run, we went crazy. We started getting out of our game, didn’t move the ball as well. But tonight we just started moving the ball, being patient and doing our game.”
Ugochukwu’s gaudy box score — a game-high 18 points and eight rebounds — comes with a caveat more illustrative of his own point. He was held scoreless until a free throw with 4:58 remaining in the first half. In the next three minutes of game time, he scored all six McNeese points, stretching its lead to five.
And, from the 18:45 to 14:25 mark of the second half, Ugochukwu scored 10 points. In total, 17 of his 18 points came in hardly nine minutes of game time, necessitating other players’ involvement in an offense Ugochukwu had carried in the team’s conference-opening win against Northwestern State.
Jamaya Burr obliged with 14 points and a career-high five steals. James Harvey canned three 3-pointers — his biggest beat the shot clock on the Cowboys’ first possession of the second half and stretched his team’s lead to five.
Seldom-used redshirt freshman Richard Laku, inserted to lend his 6-foot-8 frame at the top of McNeese’s zone, scored eight points in the game’s final three minutes to weather the Lumberjacks’ last gasp.
“When we come to play hard, play as a team, we can win games like that,” Ugochukwu said.
The game ended and Simmons was careful to avoid complacency. The win and its historical significance was to be celebrated, he said, especially in a conference exhibiting more parity with each passing day.
Soon another maxim came, this time from a man more familiar to his team and to the goals Simmons strives to reach.
“As (Alabama) coach (Nick) Saban says, ‘the process,’” Simmons said. “We can look at it and pat ourselves tonight and come back and work tomorrow. It’s a good feeling … If we stay together and keep believing in each other, I think we can finish this thing the right way.”
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