Men’s basketball: Louisiana-Lafayette 63, UNT 58

The Mean Green made a furious comeback from 12 points down, but could not catch up with the Ragin' Cajuns.

The North Texas men’s basketball team’s rally came up just shy against Louisiana-Lafayette as the Ragin’ Cajuns held off the Mean Green 63-58 to capture a key Sun Belt Conference win from the Cajundome.

North Texas (18-10, 9-8) , trailing by as many as 12-points in the second half, put on a furious comeback in the final five minutes but couldn’t complete the rally.

“I thought that we played hard and made some defensive stops late in the game, but we are one of the better free throw shooting teams in the conference and needed to shoot the ball better from the line than we did tonight,” said coach Johnny Jones.

Coupled with the UALR win over Denver, the Mean Green’s pursuit of the West Division title ended with the loss to Louisiana-Lafayette.

Down 51-39 with 9:08 remaining the Mean Green began its comeback. Fueled by lockdown defense the Ragin’ Cajuns (14-14, 10-7) would be held to only 11 points as the Mean Green chipped away at the lead thanks to 3-pointers by Colin Denis and Adam McCoy.

The Mean Green got the lead down to three at 58-55 with 1:30 remaining, but free throws doomed North Texas in the game and down the stretch. North Texas missed 17 free throws in the game.

North Texas had one final chance trailing 61-58 with under 20 seconds to play, but David Dees came up with a steal and Randell Daigle hit two free throws with eight seconds to close out the contest.

McCoy led the Mean Green with a career-high 14 points off the bench and Quincy Williams notched his third straight double-double with 10 points and 15 rebounds.

The Mean Green closes out the regular season on the road against New Orleans on Saturday night at 7 p.m.

Source: UNT