The Lamar Cardinals and the Abilene Christian Wildcats meet in a Southland conference tournament semi-final matchup from the Merrell Center in college basketball action on Friday night.
The Lamar Cardinals booked their spot in the semis with a 70-69 upset win over Sam Houston State last time out. Davion Buster led the Cardinals in scoring with 17 points on 5 of 11 shooting with 3 threes while Kasen Harrison added 15 points with 3 assists and Anderson Kopp added 13 points on 5 of 10 shooting with 3 threes and a pair of steals. Lincoln Smith chipped in 11 points on 5 of 6 shooting to cap off the group of double-digit scorers for Lamar in the winning effort while David Muoka added 6 points to match his team-high 6 rebounds and Ellis Jefferson had a team-high 4 assists in the victory for Lamar.
The Abilene Christian Wildcats cemented their spot in the semis as the #2 seed in the conference with a 13-2 mark in conference play as part of their 21-4 overall record this season. Kolton Kohl led the Wildcats in scoring with 12.2 PPG along with 4.7 RPG while Coryon Mason has 10.8 PPG with 2.2 APG and Joe Pleasant has 10.7 PPG with a team-high 5.4 RPG to lead the Wildcats on the glass and to cap off the group of double-digit scorers for Abilene Christian up to this point in the season. Reggie Miller also dished out a team-high 4.4 APG to lead Abilene Christian in the assist department this season. As a team, Abilene Christian is averaging 77 PPG on 45.7% shooting from the field and 34.5% from three while allowing 60.7 PPG on 40% shooting from the field and 31% from three this season.
Lamar is 7-0 ATS in their last 7 games overall and 4-0 ATS in their last 4 games against a team with a winning record while the over is 7-1 in their last 8 Friday games. Abilene Christian is 5-1 ATS in their last 6 games overall and 4-1 ATS in their last 5 neutral site games while the over is 9-0 in their last 9 games following a win.
The points with Lamar are worth a look considering that Lamar’s been a covering machine lately and have had a couple of games to shake off potential rust, but the thing is that Abilene Christian is just too good and I’m just not sure that Lamar will be able to cope with Abilene Christian’s pressure on the defensive end. I’ll lay the points with the Wildcats in this spot.