WKU Basketball: Tops Cook Rice, 80-66
“Are you telling me a shrimp fried this rice?” Nope, the Tops did
After a sluggish first half start, the Tops were able to finish the second half strong and beat Rice, 80-66.
Jairus Hamilton led the Tops with 22 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the field with 10 rebounds while Josh Anderson added 17 points off the bench. Cam Justice added 12 points on 4-of-8 shooting from deep. Dayvion McKnight had a double-double with 13 points and 12 assists while Jamarion Sharp kept dunking and finished with 12 points and five rebounds.
Mylyjael Poteat led Rice in scoring off the bench with 15 points while the Owls shot 8-of-27 from deep with the majority of the ones made in the first half.
Rice was able to come out hot and made several threes in the first half and led the majority of the half. Despite being up as much as 13 points, WKU were able to wake up and close the gap to just two points at halftime, 42-40.
In the second half, the Tops caught fire. Sharp was getting dunks, Justice has some nice dimes as well as some much needed threes, and Hamilton all around looked extremely good. On top of the Tops scoring, Rice went cold from deep and were outscored 40-24 in the second half.
Even with the rough first half start for WKU, I was rather impressed by how they responded to get a nice home against a team that just beat one of the best teams in the conference.
Speaking of best teams in the conference, WKU (10-6) will now prepare to play North Texas (10-4) on Saturday in Diddle Arena. This will be the first meeting of the teams since the god-awful C-USA title game last season where WKU buried themselves in a 17-0 hole to start the game, miraculously came back, yet tragically lost. I’d definitely love to see some revenge Saturday.
Final stats from Diddle Arena:
Great All-Team effort