Purple Bears Over Maroon

For a while Thursday, runs were coming in pairs for UCA. They started the game with two in the bottom of the first and went on to win 7-2 over Missouri State at UCA Field.



The game only lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes due to a pretty efficient game by UCA starter Matt Whitaker. Whitaker went seven innings, giving up just two runs on five hits. Head Coach Doug Clark did say he thought he had trouble commanding his fastball and that led to five walks and a hit batter.



“He had pretty good stuff,” Clark said. “He’s striking people out with his change up, and that’s big. In the past he’s had to use his curve for that.”



Whitaker was replaced to start the eighth by Matt Humphrey. Humphrey has a weird looking over-the-top delivery but is able to make it work. He gave up just one hit in relief and faced the minimum six batters thanks to a double play to end the eighth.



Offensively, UCA struck with the first six batters in the lineup. They accounted for 10 of UCA’s 11 hits and 6-of-7 RBIs.



“It’s about getting baserunners,” Clark said.



And when UCA did just that, they were successful enough in scoring those runners. Three of those runs came on sacrifice flies. Having said that, the purple Bears did strand 10 runners.



On the other side of things, MSU stranded just runners. And you can attribute some of that to two double plays.



“Yeah, we got out of a couple of jams right there,” Clark said.



Another part of that was outstanding play behind the plate from senior catcher Chris Davis. Davis was 3-for-3 throwing out MSU’s runners on steal attempts.



Sophomore Graham Martin (2B) led the Bears at the plate, going 3-for-5, but it was the three through six batters behind him that can take credit for the RBIs. Davis, Jonathan Yerby (3B), Chris Houk (RF), and Scott Cline (CF) were a combined 7-for-15 with three doubles, three sac flies and six RBIs.



Clark said that Daniel Price will get the start on Friday and Brandon Dun on Saturday. After only using two pitchers today, the bullpen should be fresh. Clark hopes to get around five innings from Price, who only got through 3-1/3 in his first start of the season.



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Football adds 22

Make it three

Laura Beth Anderson scored a career-high 21 points in the win over Nicholls State, eight of those from the free throw line.

Three straight wins for the Sugar Bears. Saturday’s win was the battle of good and bad – a bad first half where pretty much the only thing that went right was the free throw shooting and a good second half where the shots started to fall along with the number of turnovers. But in the end, UCA left the Farris Center with a 73-69 win over Nicholls State and is now in second place in the SLC East.



It was an exciting ending to a game that started out looking like many others from earlier this season.



After being down 38-29 at the half, the Sugar Bears rallied back to tie it at 47-47 thanks in part to good defense and scoring off the bench with two of the starters in foul trouble throughout the game.



The Sugar Bears pulled away to a 10-point lead of their own, but the Colonels put up a fight of their own. And the result was a 10-0 run by Nicholls State that tied the game at 67-67 with 2:44 left.



But UCA never trailed and made 4-of-6 free throws down the stretch to seal it.



Sidenote: Once the game was tied at 67-67, the Colonels had a few chances to take the lead. I’d argue that the second chance – which still only resulted in a turnover – should have never happened. Here’s what happened. Kia Lee went up to grab a rebound after a Nicholls State miss. She was undercut by a Colonol and came down awkwardly. The ref on that side of the floor blew the whistle for what everyone in the building assumed was a late foul call. But no, Lee was called for travelling, and the crowd errupted. Not only should there have been a foul called, but I’m not even sure that Lee picked up her left foot as she was stumbling. But I digress – just an interesting story I thought. Obviously the ladies were able to overcome it.

• The numbers couldn’t have been much worse in the first half. The Sugar Bears got beat in every statistical category – except they were +1 in blocks and 14-of-16 from the free throw line, 87.5%. That’s the only reason they were down just 9 at the half. 
• The second half was the opposite. UCA won the points in the paint (16), points off turnovers(11), second chance points(4), fast break points(2), bench points(9). The field goal percentage was 50%, three-point percentage was 60, and even though they only shot 68% from the free throw line, that was still better than the Colonels.
• 14 - total number of turnovers. The lowest all season. Only 5 of those were in the second half.
• Freshman Laura Beth Anderson had a career high 21 points, including 9-of-10 from the line and 2-of-2 from outside.
• The only other Sugar Bears in double-figures were Kia Lee with 15 points, and Jamye Adair had 14. Adair was in foul trouble throughout most of the game and only played 19 minutes.
• UCA took 41 free throw attempts in the game. Nicholls State took just 21.