USF men shocked at home by Texas-Arlington
Certain wins in college basketball rate as resume builders. Certain loss rates such as CV errors. On the Hilltop Monday night, the Dons’ resume absorbed a particularly ugly blemish.
“You can’t look past somebody,” USF head coach Chris Gerlufsen said, “and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. But we have to respect the game and play the game the right way, approach the game the right way. It doesn’t matter who you play, where you play. Our effort and our approach has to be the same.”
USF (9-4) began Monday with a NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rating of 85. Texas-Arlington (5-7) was at 296; of its four wins before Monday, only one — against Northern Kentucky — was over a Division I opponent.
The Dons were coming off a 75-73 win at UNLV on Saturday in which they scored the game’s final 11 points to hand the Rebels their first loss of the season. No. 25 Arizona State (11-1) comes to the Hilltop on Wednesday. It meant that the match with the Mavericks had all the features of a dreaded joint game.
“We tried not to come into that game with that mentality, but I think subconsciously we had some elements of that,” said USF guard Tyrell Roberts, who scored 24 points. “They’re an extremely physical team and at the end of the day they just played harder than us – and we weren’t ready for that.”
Texas-Arlington thoroughly outplayed USF. The Mavericks dominated the glass, outshooting USF 40-28. Of those 40 boards, 13 were offensive. The Dons trailed by 17 with 14 minutes remaining and trailed 64-52 with less than a minute and a half remaining.
That’s when they quickly scored eight straight points — a 3-pointer by Zane Meeks and a bucket and a trey by Roberts — to cut the deficit to four with 50 seconds left.
Chendall Weaver went 1-for-2 at the line on Texas-Arlington consecutive possessions to make it 66-60. With 29 ticks left, Roberts was fouled on a 3-point attempt, hit all three foul shots and the Dons had trimmed the deficit to 66-63.
With 21 seconds left, the Mavs’ Marion Humphrey converted two foul shots for the final points of the game.
Gerlufsen gave “all credit to (the Mavericks) They just beat us. They played extremely well. I’m proud of our team for the game to the end. We have to have that approach at the start of the game.”
The Mavericks opened the game on a 7-0 run and led by as many as 15 in the first half. USF committed 10 turnovers in the opening half, including eight in the first 11 minutes. Those mistakes led to easy baskets for the Mavs.
Example: With eight minutes left in the half, Weaver stole the ball from Toni Rocak. Kyron Gibson got the ball in front and lobbed to Aaron Cash, whose big bang made it 23-14. It was part of a 14-0 Texas-Arlington blitz.
“They played harder than us,” Roberts said. “We have to own it, we have to accept it, we have to take responsibility for it – and we have to learn from it. That’s the only thing we can do. We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.”
Card: Gerlufsen and guard Khalil Shabazz each received a technical foul in the second half. … Cash and Gibson led the Mavericks with 12 points each. … Texas-Arlington faces Cal (0-12) at Haas Pavilion on Wednesday afternoon.
Steve Kroner is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @SteveKronerSF
