CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi men's basketball team ended their final home appearance Wednesday night with a 71-52 win over UIW to give head coach
Jim Shaw the 21
st win of the regular season, the most of a first-year head coach in program history.
With the 21-10 mark, Shaw now accounts for the best debut season record for any head coach in program history within the regular season. He beat out his predecessor, Steve Lutz, who won 20 regular season games in his first year when Shaw was on staff as an assistant.
Shaw has now helped guide the Islanders to three straight 20+ win seasons and their second straight year with a double-bye into the Southland Conference Tournament semifinals. The Islanders (21-10, 14-4 SLC) had already clinched the No. 2 seed prior to tonight's matchup with UIW (8-23, 3-15 SLC) but will now take on the conference championships on the high note.
It comes with a well-rounded victory for the Islanders, who held the Cardinals to just 21 points in the first half before securing the double digit win with an improved 42.8 shooting mark in the second. All available student-athletes saw time on the court.
Junior
Garry Clark and sophomore
Owen Dease led the team with 12 points apiece while the former also came down with 10 rebounds for the double-double. Redshirt senior
Dayne Prim joined them in double figures with 11 points while sophomore
Stephen Giwa matched that in boards to lead the team in rebounds on the night.
Clark and Prim both got to the perimeter to bucket two long-range shots each, accounting for four of the team's seven threes.
UIW jumped out for an early 9-4 lead before a 9-0 scoring run quickly remedied that for the Islanders. The one-handed flush from junior
Dian Wright-Forde pulled A&M-Corpus Christi ahead for the first time at 10-9 before the denial by graduate
Marion Humphrey led to the three-point shot from junior
Tedrick Washington Jr. to make it 13-9 at 12:14 as the sequence forced a Cardinals' timeout.
It didn't slow the Islanders down, however, as Clark and Prim both went deep twice for four of the next seven made field goals for the Islanders to create a 31-19 separation with 2:11 left in the half.
The onslaught didn't stop there as the Islanders opened the second half on a 16-0 unanswering to seemingly run away with the game. The pull-up three from junior
Jordan Roberts had the Islanders up 43-21 before Dease headed off on the fastbreak to get up for the slam home at 17:34 on the next possession.
Sophomore
Kam Parker converted on back-to-back takeaways to push it to 59-33 with 9:13 left to play. The Islanders then unloaded the bench seven minutes remaining to close out the 71-52 victory.
The Islanders will now sit on their seeding until next Tuesday, March 12 when they play in the 8 p.m. semifinals of the SLC Championships set in Lake Charles, La.
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