HUNTINGTON — The Marshall University men’s basketball team won its most important game of the season to date on Wednesday against the Sun Belt’s top team, Arkansas State, 77-72.
The reasons are as follows:
1. Every game is important in a conference tournament layout in which the higher seed a team has, the fewer games it must play to win the title.
2. It was a nationally televised win against the best team in the conference.
3. The Thundering Herd now holds the tiebreaker with the Red Wolves, as the two will not meet again in the regular season.
Marshall (15-10, 8-4 SBC) is now in a knot for second place with five other teams behind the Red Wolves at 9-3. A win over Georgia State last week, or a victory in any of the other one-possession losses Marshall has had in conference play, would’ve put Marshall at the top of the Sun Belt on Wednesday.
Nate Martin, who led the Herd with 18 points and 14 rebounds, showed that sometimes clichés are true — every game should be played as if it were your last.
“This conference every year is a grind,” Martin said. “Teams beat up on everyone, so we’ve got to focus on the things we can control. We can’t control the outcomes of other games. We want to treat every game like it’s our last.”
Martin scored his 1,000th career point in the win.
“That’s what it’s about, players making plays,” Herd coach Corny Jackson said of the full-team effort. “When players make plays, they make coaches look good. When they make shots and make plays — that’s what it comes down to. Our guys made some great plays.”
The Herd took its first lead with 17:56 remaining and never lost it. Arkansas State made a run of nine points in the first half and had flurries throughout the night — a trait of the Red Wolves that Jackson felt Marshall was ready to handle.
“They made runs early, and we had talked about that,” Jackson said. “We showed them when they played at Troy that [Joseph Pinion] had 12 or 13 points in two minutes to win the game for them. We showed it to remind them. It was on their conscious, and I thought they did a great job of getting back in transition and battling on the boards. We beat them 42-35 on the boards with 15 offensive rebounds. Heck of a job.”
Dezayne Mingo also had a double-double, with 14 points and 10 assists.
“We did a lot of preparing and talking about how good they were,” Mingo said. “Before the game, we emphasized that we’re good too. If we go out there and play hard, the game could be ours. We did that today.”
His passes led to more made shots as the game went on. Marshall entered the locker room at halftime shooting 2 of 14 from deep before coming out in the second half and going 5 of 9 from the perimeter and shooting 60% from the floor for nearly double its field-goal percentage from the first half.
“That’s our work,” Mingo said. “We shoot every day, so when the ball doesn’t go in, we don’t shy away from that. We believe in every single person that steps on the court, so we continue to stay positive and push each other to keep shooting.”
Wyatt Fricks was one of many to step up for the Herd as he went 3 of 5 from 3-point range in 12 minutes of action.
“I’m so proud of him,” Mingo said. “That was the highlight of my night tonight. You’ll see it on film — I was super-excited every time he scored. He’s a great shooter and a great player. Seeing the ball go in for him is my favorite thing to see.”
Marshall is now averaging 111.2 points per 100 possessions in conference play as the No. 2 offense by efficiency in the conference. The Herd is the conference leader in six metrics, while it’s the second-best shooting team from 3-point range in conference games at 36.3%.
Marshall has a week-long lull before its next matchup — an 8 p.m. tip on Feb. 13 at South Alabama, with which Marshall is tied in the conference standings.
“We don’t want to get too high or too low,” Jackson said. “There’s a lot of ball left. We’re going to hit the road for our second four-game road swing. It’s harder to win on the road than at home. We have to be focused on playing at a high level.”
The Jaguars are 16-8 and have the best defensive efficiency in the Sun Belt at 93.6 points allowed per 100 possessions in conference games. However, they also allow the highest rate of 3-pointer attempts from conference opponents.
South Alabama has a matchup on Saturday with Akron at 2 p.m. in the MAC-Sun Belt Challenge.
West Virginia prep basketball fans may enjoy that former Morgantown High School star Sharron Young is averaging 8.6 points per game on 18 minutes as a true freshman for the Zips. He led Akron in scoring from the bench with 18 points in a win over Ball State on Tuesday.
The matchup with South Alabama is the first outing of the second four-game road trip for Marshall on its regular-season schedule. The Herd is the only team in the conference with two such swings.
“I don’t like it,” Jackson said. “I like playing in the Cam, but the schedule is done. We have to play the hand we were dealt, go on the road, focus and bring some W’s back to Huntington.”
