Gage Johnson
Sports Editor
Murray State men’s basketball opened up the regular season against Southern University on Saturday, Nov. 9, leaving the CFSB Center with a commanding 69-49 victory.
The Racers were running and gunning out of the gates, jumping out to a quick 10-0 lead after a pull-up three from freshman guard DaQuan Smith forced the Jaguars to call a timeout.
Nearly a minute later, senior forward Darnell Cowart checked into the ballgame and received a large roar from the crowd.
Cowart missed the vast majority of the summer with a leg injury and had no timetable set for his return. He played 11 minutes on the night, finishing with five points and three rebounds.
Head Coach Matt McMahon was pleased with Cowart’s short performance, but wants his senior forward to understand that getting back to 100% won’t come instantly.
“I thought he did well,” McMahon said. “[I’m] just trying to remind him that this will be a process. You don’t just come back and average 30 points a game right away, but I thought he did a lot of good things out there.”
After Cowart entered the game, both teams netted a few buckets and then the game hit a stalemate.
Murray State was unable to get in any offensive rhythm for the next six minutes of play, also turning the ball over eight times in that stretch. The Racers finished the first half with 13 turnovers.
While McMahon wasn’t happy about the lack of efficiency on the offensive end, he preached to his team to keep playing on both ends of the floor during that stretch.
“[I just told them] keep guarding,” McMahon said. “I think the score was 12-2 for about a half hour and then 12-4 for about another half hour, so obviously we were trying to fix some things offensively, but at the same time I didn’t want to lose our defensive focus and intensity because I did think that was very good.”
Despite their struggles offensively, the Racers held Southern U to 17 points in the first half on 7-for-30 shooting. This was the first time Murray State has held a Division I team below 20 points in a half at the CFSB Center since Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015, against SIUE.
Senior guard Tevin Brown said they came in planning to shut down everything, as they had scouted the team well coming in.
“[We] just [had] to make sure that we came in with a defensive mindset to stop everything that we knew they were going to do,” Brown said. “We scouted them pretty well, so we knew everything they were going to do coming in the game. We just had to do a good job of stopping them.”
Murray State carried its defensive effort into the second half, with Brown and sophomore forward KJ Williams leading the way offensively.
After a quiet first half, Brown shot 4-5 from the field and 2-for-3 from deep, scoring 14 points in the half.
Williams put together another dominant performance reminiscent of his game against Martin Methodist, tallying 15 points and grabbing 11 rebounds for a double-double against Southern U.
Murray State continued to control the game throughout the second half, ultimately coming away with a 69-49 victory over the Jaguars.
The Racers didn’t have their cleanest performance to begin the season, but McMahon and company know that it’s going to be a process getting this team to prime form considering the challenge of graduating multiple players and having multiple recent injuries.
“Eight of our 14 guys didn’t play last year,” McMahon said. “Three of our top six right now have missed between six to nine months due to injury in the last calendar year and our junior point guard is averaging 19 points and six assists a game in the National Basketball Association. So we’re going to be a work in progress on defining the roles of our team, but that’s why I’m thrilled sitting here tonight 1-0 because these guys played their tails off tonight. The things that we made mistakes on are fixable and if we’ll come in and work hard we’ll continue to get better each and every day.”
Murray State has a quick turnaround, as they will hit the road to take on the University of Tennessee on Tuesday, Nov. 12, in Knoxville, Tennessee.
