WKU Basketball: Tops Sputter Against North Texas, 65-60
Dayvion McKnight & Jamarion Sharp leads charge during a disappointing shooting day for the Tops
The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers came into the third weekend of January looking for revenge. Saturdayโs game at Diddle Arena was the much-anticipated rematch of the 2021 CUSA Championship game. The North Texas Mean Green traveled to Bowling Green looking to continue their conference game-winning streak.
Starting off the game was Jamarion Sharp winning the tip-off and scoring the first two points of the game.
Itโs been all defense ever since for both WKU and North Texas. Sharp throughout the game has been productive. For most of the first half, North Texas has been leading the game with the occasional lead change in favor of WKU. Thankfully, the Tops were playing great defense despite allowing the Mean Green to shoot the ball from the three-point arc.
The biggest sequence of the half was the game being tied at 16 at the 10:57 mark courtesy of a bucket from Dayvion McKnight. The offense started to wane as the Mean Green took advantage of a six-point scoring run. After hitting another three-point shot, UNT was leading 37-30 at halftime. Sharp and McKnight led all WKU scorers with 10 points each.
In the second half, the misfortunes for WKU kept on piling up. The biggest lead of the game for UNT was at 12 points as they were in another scoring drought. The strong play of Tylor Perry and Thomas Bell was enough to keep the Mean Green rolling even when the Tops tried crawling back to end the deficit.
The shooting woes for WKU turned sour quickly as they were not able to get a lead change for the rest of the afternoon. The Mean Green continued their three-point shooting success while the Tops struggled. McKnight was able to stop another scoring drought but a technical foul was called against WKU. This ended all momentum once Jairus Hamilton was credited with the foul, sending North Texas to the line for a bonus.
The Mean Green had their biggest lead of the game with twelve points as they lead WKU 57-45 with less than four minutes in the contest. After going 0-7 beyond the three-point line, Diddle Arena was silenced. Thankfully, Camron Justice was able to save the streak with a three-pointer late into the second half. the Tops were also able to trim the deficit to seven points as time was running out After the final buzzer, the Tops lost the game 65-60 as North Texas improves to 11-4 on their season. The Tops fall to 10-7 with their second conference loss of the year.
Even in the loss, the Tops shot 46.7 from the field overall. They were also 2 out of 12 from the free point line. Thankfully, free throws were not the issue as they were able to shoot 12 out of 16 from the charity stripe. McKnight led all scorers with 23 points. Both Sharp & Luke Frampton also led the team with seven rebounds each.
The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers will try to look past this agonizing conference loss as they focus their sights on a two-game road trip in the Sunshine State. They will take on Florida Atlantic on Thursday, January 22 with a 6 pm tip-off time. The game will be broadcast on the CBS Sports Network.
Here are the final stats from Todayโs loss at Diddle:
