Texas A&M-CC beats Houston Baptist, gets tourney berth

Mar 8, 2020, 12:13 am

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Tony Lewis scored 12 points and a go-ahead jumper with 1:17 to play and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi clinched a Southland Conference Tournament berth with an 84-78 win over Houston Baptist in Saturday's regular-season finale for both teams.

Houston Baptist led 78-77 on Qon Murphy's layup with 1:54 left before Lewis hit his jumper. Elijah Schmidt's 3-pointer on the next possession put the Islanders up 81-78 and Jordan Hairston and Irshaad Hunte combined for three free throws from there.

Hairston made 4 of 6 3-pointers and scored 20 points and Myles Smith had 18 with five assists for the Islanders (14-17, 10-10), whose tournament seeding remains to be determined. Schmidt scored 12 points.

The Islanders forced a season-high 23 turnovers and scored a season-high 42 first-half points.

Jalon Gates hit 4 of 6 3-pointers and scored 20 points for the Huskies (4-25, 4-16), who made a season high 13 of 20 3s (65%) but finished last in conference standings. Ian DuBose added 17 points to move into eighth on the program's all-time scoring list with 1,446 career points. Murphy hit 4 of 5 3-pointers and finished with 14 points and five rebounds.

The Islanders evened the season series against the Huskies with the win. Houston Baptist defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 82-77 on Feb. 1.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights, http://www.automatedinsights.com/ap, using data from STATS LLC, https://www.stats.com