LaMarcus Reed shook his head, smiling as he ran up the court.
The senior forward missed a three-pointer but followed up his own miss with an acrobatic layup off the rebound. Junior forward Jordan Reves also met Reed at the rim and tried to tip it in as well. Reed made the basket, and everything went right for the Mavericks.
“Man, I was just laughing,” Reed said with a smile. “I thought they were going to credit Jordan with the bucket, but they gave it to me. Jordan was saying, ‘They better not give that to you,’ so I thought it was funny.”
Reed scored 18 points and junior forward Kevin Butler chipped in a double-double with 17 points and 12 rebounds as UTA sprinted past Texas State 73-53 Saturday night for Homecoming at the College Park Center for its 15th win in a row, increasing the school-record mark.
The Mavericks are now 11-0 in Southland Conference play and hold the second-longest winning streak in NCAA Division I, behind only the top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats.
UTA held Texas State to just 29.3 percent shooting and converted Bobcat misses into easy baskets in transition. UTA scored 14 fast break points, but head coach Scott Cross said his team scored even more than that in the team’s secondary break, the first few seconds after a fast break slows down, by making aggressive moves early in the shot clock.
“Sometimes the best shot you can get is the quick one,” Cross said. “Sometimes it’s a catch-22 because you have a 10 or 15-point lead and you want to slow it down. But the quick shots were some of the best shots tonight.”
And when the Mavericks missed a basket early in the shot clock, Butler was there to clean up the mess. Of Butler’s 12 rebounds, five were on the offensive end, allowing the Mavericks to control the tempo and prevent the Bobcats from creeping back into the game.
“Texas State is one of the biggest games for us in conference,” he said. “It’s good that we got a sweep. I was ready for this game, I was really hyped. When you go in playing defense, the offense just comes.”
With the win, the Mavericks clinched a spot in the Southland Conference Tournament in March, something new considering the Mavs missed out on the tournament last year.
The Mavericks have a chance for their 16th win in a row when they travel to Nacogdoches to play Stephen F. Austin Wednesday night, a team that sits directly behind the Mavericks in the standings.
Follow Josh on Twitter: @Boweman55
