By Con Marshall
CHADRON, Neb. – Point guard Jalen Thomas scored an NCAA career-high 24 points while leading the Chadron State men’s basketball team to a pulsating 62-58 victory over Colorado Christian in a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference game played in Chadron on Thursday night.
The win moves the Eagles up to 11-10 overall and 7-6 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. Currently, the Eagles are tied for seventh place in the conference with Colorado Mesa, with the top eight teams qualifying for the conference tournament. Colorado Christian fell to 8-13 overall and 4-9 in conference.
Thomas scored 12 points in each half and shot 9-for-18 to finish 50 percent from the field. Thomas shot 6-for-12 in the first half, mostly by driving past his defender for layups, then sank all six of his free throws in the second half while making 3 of 6 from the field. Thomas has now made 49 of 55 free throws for 89%.
The game had 10 ties and 10 lead changes, most of them in the first half. The Eagles led for 25 minutes, compared to just over five minutes for the Denver-area visitors. Chadron State’s advantage was never too significant, however, as CSC was never ahead by more than three points until Thomas drove for one of his layups with six seconds remaining before intermission to put his team up by a 28-23 score into halftime.
While Chadron State maintained the lead most of the second half, the Cougars got a big boost from 6-4 sophomore Bobby McWard, who kept them in contention. McWard made his presence felt by nailing 4-of-8 shots from behind the arc in the second half while finishing as the Cougars’ only double figure scorer with 14 points.
The Eagles also got a big lift late in the game from their leading scorer for the season, Zy Wright, who scored all eight of his points in the second half, including the Eagles’ final three field goals of the game. He also was the game’s leading rebounder with nine.
The Eagles out-rebounded the Cougars by a 45-29 margin, but had 17 turnovers compared to Christian’s nine.
Trey Ballard, who made two of CSC’s three treys in the first half, also was 5 of 6 from the free throw line for 11 points and Julio Phipps added nine points and eight rebounds.
As the low score would indicate, neither team shot the ball well for the field, in part because both teams played solid defense. The Eagles were 22-of-54 for 40.7 percent and 4 of 11 from 3-point range, but made 14 of 16 free throws. The Cougars were 21 of 62 from the field for 34 percent and took half of their field goal shots from behind the arc, making 8 of 31 overall for 25.7 percent. The Cougars were 8-for-10 at the charity stripe.
The Eagles will be at home again Saturday afternoon to play CSU Pueblo. Black Hills State beat the ThunderWolves 75-70 on Thursday night in Spearfish to put CSU Pueblo’s record at 10-11 overall and 5-8 in RMAC play.