Tuesday, December 2, 2014
PORTALES, N.M. – The Eastern New Mexico men's basketball team saw their five-game winning streak in home openers snapped Tuesday night as Texas-Permian Basin came away with an 81-65 victory. Junior
Lawrence Domingo led the Greyhounds with 12 points and was one of four players to grab a team-high five rebounds.
ENMU drops to 4-4 on the season while the Falcons, winners of four straight, are now 5-1.
Following a jumper in the paint for the first points of the game by UTPB, junior
Demetrius Balark hit a three-pointer to put the Greyhounds ahead.
Both squads traded baskets with the Falcons taking a 9-7 lead at the 17:01 mark of the period. A quick 6-0 run in 52 second by ENMU that was capped off by a jumper in the pain from junior
Jason Clardy gave them their biggest lead of the game of four.
UTPB responded by scoring 21 of the next 27 points covering just over seven minutes. The lone points for Eastern came on threes courtesy of juniors
Deyton De La Cerda and
John Gilliam.
After following behind by 14 with just over five minutes until intermission, Gilliam hit a jumper in the paint to start an 8-0 run. Junior
Chris Wyms contributed three points on an old-fashion three-point play while Clardy hit another jumper in the lane to cap the scoring streak.
The Falcons scored six straight to take a double-digit advantage but senior
Seth Bailey nailed his only field goal attempt of the game from downtown to cut the deficit to eight. The final basket of the half came at 29 seconds on a layup from UTPB's Madison Turner to put them up 47-37.
In the second half, the Falcons stretched their lead to 17 three times with the last coming with 11:29 to play in the contest at 69-52. The Greyhounds were able to pull to within 13 on five occurrences, the last of which was following a free throw by Domingo with just over three minutes left on the clock.
Wyms was the only other Eastern player to reach double-digits in points with 11. He also paced the team with six assists and had their only steal. Bailey, Gilliam and Wyms all had five rebounds while senior
Michael Randle blocked the first two shots of his career.
Malcolm Hill-Bey and Phadarius Taylor combined to score 43 points for the Falcons with Hill-Bey putting up 23 and Taylor adding 20. On the glass, Hill-Bey grabbed nine boards and Taylor retrieved seven.
Although ENMU allowed the Falcons to shoot 50.8 percent (30-of-59) from the field, they held them to their lowest scoring output of the season.
Eastern hits the road again on Friday for a 7 p.m. meeting with Northern New Mexico.
For the latest information on Greyhound basketball, follow
@ENMUSports on Twitter and visit the official website of ENMU Athletics at GoEasternAtheltics.com.