The UCA men’s basketball team experienced another loss Feb. 1 against the North Alabama Lions 94-65.
During pregame warmups, the Bears Basketball team lost their second-best scorer, senior forward Elias Cato, during a hamstring injury just minutes before tipoff.
The Bears (6-17, ASUN 2-8) also played without top-scorer, freshman guard Layne Taylor, as well as three other players who are essential to the team.
UCA men’s basketball coach John Shulman said to ucasports.com, “This is a basketball game and it’s supposed to teach us lessons about how to handle adversity and how to handle this stuff. But at one time or another, you’d like to have a decent break on occasion.”
“But we just couldn’t get our feet on the ground in the first half,” Shulman said. “We were kind of looking around and woe is me, and we can’t be feeling sorry for ourselves. But the reality is we’re down five dudes, and the wrong five dudes.”
At one point in the first half, the Lions (15-8, ASUN 7-3) led by 23 points and had consistent scorers for their team throughout.
Sophomore guard Brayden Fagbemi scored 19 points within the first 20 minutes, which included five three-pointers.
Fagbemi finished the game with 25 points resulting in a career-high of his own.
He was followed by freshman guard Cole McCormick with 12 points and sophomore guard Michael Evbagharu with 5 points.
Even with Fagbemi on a scoring high, the loss of important players for Central Arkansas made a large difference in its offensive abilities for the night.
“It’s hard enough to get your team ready, then you find out 12 minutes before the game that Elias is out,” Shulman said.
At the end of the first half, North Alabama led the Bears by 19 points, 49-31.
Shulman said that when they lost Taylor the week before, they had half a day to get ready to play without him, unlike the quick turnaround time they had with Cato’s injury right before the game.
Even with key players off the court, the Bears continued to fight as a team.
However, UCA struggled in the second half as the Lions extended their lead, ending the game with a final score of 94-65.
In scoring, the Lions were led by senior guard Daniel Ortiz with 21 points, followed by junior guard Jacari Lane with 17 points and freshman guard Kevin de Kovachich with 16 points.
The Bears ended with 6-for-13 making it in while at the free-throw line. However, they also made less than 50 percent (13 of 29) points that they shot from the three-point range.
Throughout the course of the game, the Bears shot 43.7 percent from the field in total.
“Brayden [Fagbemi] stepped up and made some shots, and that’s good for him,” Shulman said.
He also said that the University of North Alabama has a really good basketball team and that they’re a good team to go up against.
“And in this type of environment, to be honest, I was worried about us breaking anyway. We’ve been good, we’ve been good, we’ve been good. But sometimes you break and you get fatigued. We were probably due one of these, and I don’t like it. But the combination was probably kind of a perfect storm,” Shulman said.
The Bears play again at home Feb. 5 and will host Queen’s University at 6:30 p.m. at the Farris Center.
