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The Sugar Bears host Nicholls State for the final mid-week home game Wednesday night at 7 pm. The SBs won the first match up of the two down in south Louisiana 61-54 on January 20. It would be nice for a large vocal crowd to show up, since we've won 2 in a row and 9 of our last 10, and are still tied for 1st in the Eastern Division with SFA with 9-3 SLC records, and sit only 1 game back in the overall SLC title hunt with 4 games to be played by everyone. Pregame will begin at 6:45 on The Bear 91.3 and UCAsports.com.

Dude, take a breath in there somewhere.

so, you want more commas, or an overabundance of smilies?...

This is pointless, but how about it anyway...

Earlier this year the Sugar Bears beat Tulsa, which beat Tulane. Tulane beat Texas Tech, which has beaten No. 9 Texas A&M. Texas A&M beat No. 6 Duke. Duke beat No. 3 Ohio State. Sadly, that's as far as it gets since Duke could not beat No. 2 Stanford or No. 1 UConn.

So, no Commutative National Championship for the Sugar Bears ... though I figure UConn will make sure that doesn't happen for anybody.

NSU (4-20/1-11), 6th in East
UCA (19-6/9-3), 1st in East

NSU is playing well although they have come up short...close losses on road at Sam and TSU are reminders of how hard this game might be. SBs lead in all stats categories and won the the road game on Pippen night by 61-54. SBs need to not look past this game and play their best to get the win....this is a better team than 1-11 shows.

Hope for a big crowd to welcome the SBs back after the big road win on Sat.

Go SugarBears!!

NSU last 3 games:
Loss at Texas State by 62-50
Loss at home to SELA by 72-68
Loss at Sam Houston by 65-63


Top Players:
UCA
Megan Herbert...nuff said
Desiree Rogers...12ppg
Micah Rice...80% FT
Westin Taylor...34% 3s
NSU
Richsanda Bickham...18ppg/37% FG/3.6A/3.5S
Alisha Allen...14 ppg/6 rebs
Stats:
NSU/UCA
Scoring : 56/76
Scoring defense: 68/63
FGs: 35%/40%
FG defense: 45%/37%
3s: 30%/30%
3s defense: 34%/28%
FTs:61%/73%
Rebs: 36/45
Reb defense: 39/38
TOs: 21/18
TO defense: 21/18

We win by 20+! This game will not be a problem.

UCA 29-26 with 3:25 in first half

HALF

NSU 33
UCA 38

Need to slow Bickham down some and keep applying pressure with balanced scoring...

Go SugarBears!!
NICH UCA
Field goals 13-36 36.1% 14-26 53.8%
3-point FGs 3-12 25.0% 2-10 20.0%
Free throws 4-5 80.0% 8-9 88.9%
Reb (O-D) 18 (9-9) 18 (4-14)
Turnovers 5 10
Last FG 1st-01:33 1st-02:04
Large lead 2 (1st-19:30) 10 (1st-02:25)

Central Arkansas (19-6, 9-3)
Player FG 3FG FT Reb A F Pts
Taylor, Westin f 0-1 0-1 0-0 3 0 1 0
Rogers, Desiree f 4-11 0-4 5-6 3 0 1 13
Herbert, Megan c 3-4 0-0 1-1 5 0 1 7
Rice, Micah g 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 2 1 0
Guiden, Nakeia g 3-3 0-0 0-0 1 0 2 6
Moffitt, Marci 2-2 2-2 0-0 0 1 2 6
Gowans, Britney 2-4 0-2 0-0 2 2 1 4
Moss, Megan 0-1 0-1 2-2 0 2 0 2

Nicholls (4-20, 1-11)
Player FG 3FG FT Reb A F Pts
McNamee, Chelsea f 0-0 0-0 0-0 2 0 0 0
Hearon, Cassie f 1-6 0-4 2-2 1 2 3 4
Hunter, Raneisha f 1-2 0-0 0-0 2 1 3 2
Allen, Alisha c 3-5 0-0 0-1 4 0 3 6
Bickham, Ricshanda g 7-17 3-5 2-2 3 1 0 19
Akins, Jamia 0-3 0-3 0-0 4 1 0 0
Hoskins, Jasmine 1-2 0-0 0-0 2 0 1 2
Washington, Portia 0-1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0

7:20 left

UCA 68
Nicholls 54

UCA with 4 players in double digits, and one knocking on the door!

2:32 left

NSU 66
UCA 80

FINAL

UCA 83
Nicholls 68

UCA ended up with 4 players in double figures...headed up by Herbert with 23!

FINAL

NSU 68 (4-21/1-12)
UCA 83 (20-6/10-3)...14-1 home record

A=615

Unlike the Bears tonight, the SBs took fewer shots than NSU but hit a cool 50% FGs while LCs could only do 38% against UCA defense and UCA hit 75% FTs....Marci Moffit had career high 14 pts....Herbert another DD at 23/13....Roger added 16 and Guiden 10...Taylor had 9 on 3 3s...another night of taking care of business...

Ricshanda Bickham of NSU led all scorers at 26...

Coach: It is really big....came out not a hungry tonight....can't take that to SELA on Sat and expect to win ...Marci stepped up big....Micah under the weather...Nakia frustrated with fouls....big road test this weekend...I am sure they have this game circled on the schedule the way we jumped them early this year....

Marci: Feels really good....had to work really hard to stry to stop Bickham a she is really good at getting to the basket...I finally relaxed and shots starting falling....we have to stay focused and keep playing together...we want to win the SLC championship and that will be hard but we just have to do what we can do....

Next game: At SELA at 3pm

Go SugarBears!!

NICH UCA
Field goals 26-68 38.2% 30-60 50.0%
3-point FGs 5-26 19.2% 5-19 26.3%
Free throws 11-18 61.1% 18-24 75.0%
Reb (O-D) 40 (18-22) 38 (10-28)
Turnovers 19 18
Last FG 2nd-00:23 2nd-01:58
Large lead 2 (1st-19:30) 19 (2nd-04:34)

Central Arkansas (20-6, 10-3)
Player FG 3FG FT Reb A F Pts
Taylor, Westin f 3-6 3-6 0-0 4 1 3 9
Rogers, Desiree f 5-14 0-4 6-8 5 0 2 16
Herbert, Megan c 10-13 0-0 3-3 13 1 1 23
Rice, Micah g 0-2 0-1 0-0 0 4 1 0
Guiden, Nakeia g 5-7 0-0 0-1 4 1 4 10
Moffitt, Marci 3-5 2-3 6-8 2 2 3 14
Gowans, Britney 3-9 0-4 0-0 4 4 4 6
Moss, Chantel 0-0 0-0 1-2 0 0 0 1
Moss, Megan 1-4 0-1 2-2 1 2 2 4

Nicholls (4-21, 1-12)
Player FG 3FG FT Reb A F Pts
McNamee, Chelsea f 2-4 0-1 0-0 3 0 3 4
Hearon, Cassie f 3-11 0-7 3-4 6 4 4 9
Hunter, Raneisha f 2-3 0-0 0-0 2 1 5 4
Allen, Alisha c 6-13 1-4 0-1 9 1 4 13
Bickham, Ricshanda g 9-23 4-9 4-8 3 5 2 26
Akins, Jamia 0-5 0-4 0-1 7 1 1 0
Hoskins, Jasmine 4-7 0-0 4-4 6 0 4 12
Washington, Portia 0-2 0-1 0-0 1 0 0 0

20 wins!!! Simply AMAZING!

Yep, absolutely unbelievable. I don't know that one person on the planet thought this team was getting 20 wins this year ... except maybe whoever the one coach is who gave the Sugar Bears a first-place vote in the preseason poll.

What's also absolutely unbelievable is a crowd of 615. A 20-win, 1st-place team playing its next-to-last home game of the year and it is to the seventh-smallest crowd out of 15 home games and smallest since the Houston Baptist game on Jan. 5 (when school wasn't even in session).

What the hell do you have to do around here for people to consistently give a damn?

It's really pretty sad. Arkansas State, who is 12-16, drew better than that tonight. UALR, who has it going pretty good right now (23-5) had over 1,000 more for their game tonight than we did. Almost three times as many.

Lamar, a team we're battling for the conference championship (also a team the Sugar Bears destroyed a few weeks ago) played in front of 1,776 at their place tonight. Stephen F. Austin, the team we're deadlocked with at the top of the East Division ... and the place the Sugar Bears are going a week from today? Home crowd of 1,596 tonight.

How about this ... 15-win Harding, in their last home game against North Alabama, had 1058. (The drawing power of doubleheaders, maybe? Or maybe they just like basketball in Searcy.)

So yeah, pretty big night for the Sugar Bears - 20 wins, tied the biggest turnaround in Southland history, stay in first place, Herbert wraps up the rebounding record, record for home wins, so on and so on. And there were 600 people there to see it (those who were there should be commended ... and should all drag about five of their closest friends to the next one).

How deflating is that? Run off the floor after your 20th win to mostly crickets with a only handful of folks left there to offer any applause. Woo, go team go.