Jarren Greenwood corralled the final of many, many clanked 3-pointers, rifling the basketball in the open floor to a streaking Richard Laku.
Laku, a little-used redshirt freshman who played a 12 crucial minutes at the top of McNeese State’s new-look zone defense Monday night inside Burton Coliseum, laid the basketball through the hoop while absorbing Chase Winchester’s contact.
Dave Simmons pumped his fist and let a sly smile creep across his lips, the realization of his team’s maturation finally resonating with the 11th-year coach who’d been reiterating for weeks that progress was apparent.
Monday, it was tangible, its form a 69-54 upset against Stephen F. Austin — the darlings of the Southland Conference for the last four seasons and a team the league’s coaches and sports information directors picked to finish second prior to the season.
“We beat a very good basketball team,” Simmons said. “They’re the defending champions in the league, even though coaches change, they still have some of their big players back. We knew they were going to bring it tonight.”
Bullying through double teams for a second straight game, Stephen Ugochukwu had a game-high 18 points and eight rebounds.
Ugochukwu, the team’s leading scorer in its Southland opener against Northwestern, did not score until swishing a free throw with 4:57 remaining in the first half to cut an early Cowboys deficit to 22-19.
The bullish Lewisville, Texas native scored the game’s next six points, giving McNeese a lead it would not relinquish.
“SFA, they play really tough defense, and my team did a good job of giving me the ball at the right spots,” Ugochukwu said. “I just tried to stay patient, not try to force things and go with the flow. We try not to get too rattled when things don’t go our way, so I try to be patient and pick my spots.”
Cowboys point guard Jamaya Burr added 14 points and four assists, including six free throws in the final six minutes to keep the offensively-challenged Lumberjacks at bay.
Stephen F. Austin shot just 28 percent and made only five of its 26 3-point attempts against a zone defense McNeese refined all week.
“I thought our zone was really good. From the tape, we’d seen them struggle with a zone in previous games, so we said we were going to zone them some … Our length, I thought, was the difference. When we brought in Richard Laku, that made our zone look real big.”
Mired in a moribund shooting slump that momentarily robbed him of his starting spot, James Harvey beat the shot clock with a 3-pointer on the Cowboys’ first possession of the second half, stretching a tenuous two-point lead to five before Ugochukwu continued his evisceration of the visitor.
Ugochukwu scored eight of the team’s next 11 points — Harvey supplied the other three with his third 3-pointer of the night — neglecting Stephen F. Austin’s aggressive, trapping defense that sent two players toward him every time he touched the basketball.
“We knew before the season he had to play well to put us in basketball games,” Simmons said. “I think you can see it now. He’s coming along, his confidence, and he works so hard every day.”
The win was McNeese’s first against Stephen F. Austin, the Southland’s NCAA Tournament representative in each of the last three seasons, since 2012 and the first in Burton Coliseum since a 59-56 victory on Feb. 14, 2009.
Simmons recalled the game with ease. Laku was in a Dallas middle school, unable to fathom where his career would take him.
“Hmm,” he said when told of the feat. “We made history.”
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