Men's Basketball | 1/17/2016 8:23:00 PM
Eastern New Mexico University Men's Basketball | 01/17/2016 | David Norton, Assistant Director of Athletic Communications | Photo by Mati Tharp
PORTALES, N.M. — The Eastern New Mexico University men's basketball team is getting set to take on No. 6 Tarleton State University, coming off tough losses to Texas A&M-Kingsville followed by a heartbreaker to No. 15 Angelo State at home, where the Hounds gave up a seven point lead with under two minutes left to play.
Tarleton (13-3, 3-1 LSC) is one of several teams in the Lone Star Conference that is currently ranked nationally. Their ranking will most likely drop slightly in the upcoming week, due to the Texans losing a 66-63 contest to the LSC's top ranked team, No. 4 Midwestern State, Wednesday. Tipoff is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. (MT) in Stephenville, Texas, for the matchup between ENMU and the Texans.
Since 2012, ENMU (4-12, 0-4 LSC) is 1-9 against Tarleton. Their lone win came in 2013, when the Hounds won a close one, 59-56, at home.
On the season thus far, John Gilliam leads the team in scoring average with 16 points per game, while Lawrence Domingo leads the team in total points with 189. Gilliam is just now returning after missing seven games due to injury. Domingo also leads the team on the glass, snagging 8.3 rebounds a game and is close to averaging a double-double for the season (he currently leads the team with four double-doubles already.)
Javaan Mumtaz has emerged along with Kevin Saiz as the team's 3-point specialist. Saiz is hitting .463 percent of his shots from beyond the arc while Mumtaz is at .405 percent. Mumtaz now has two games on the season where he hit five 3-pointers and also set a career-high in scoring against Angelo State with 20 points in the contest.
ENMU's big men, Chaunce Hill and Stephon Edwards, are still trying to get accustomed to the LSC's fast-paced, hard-nosed style of basketball. While both have had outstanding performances on the year already, the two bigs have been saddled with early foul trouble lately and are trying to find some consistency as of late.
Hill leads the team in blocks, totaling 18 on the season while Edwards is averaging just under 10 points per game while snagging five rebounds a contest. Hill set a career-high with five blocks in a single game against Wayland Baptist University two weeks prior to today.
Brady Patterson, the standout, true-freshman guard, along with Ladarius Stewart, another freshman, are playing well, with Patterson running the offense smoothly and Stewart recording several 15+ point games already. The two, combined with the aforementioned players and the rest of the young talent ENMU has, are a bright sign of the future to come for the program.
As a team, the Hounds are shooting .407 percent from the field, compared to their opponents .440. Eastern is averaging 74.2 ppg, again falling short of their opponents 81.3 ppg. Where the Greyhounds have a huge advantage is on the glass, where they are averaging almost 43 rebounds a contest, five more than their opposition.
The Hounds are on the cusp of turning their team into a dominant player in the region, having lost seven of their 12 losses by 11 of fewer points. Proving that they can compete with the LSC's best on any given night in their loss to Angelo State (70-68), Eastern is looking to finish out the remainder of their season strong, with more than half of their conference schedule left to play.
