LAKE CHARLES – Saturday's McNeese Cowboys basketball game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi will be the biggest home game played in Legacy Center history and the biggest home game for McNeese in more than 20 years.
Tip-off for the Southland Conference showdown between the first place Cowboys and second place Islanders will be at 4 p.m. The game will broadcast on ESPN+. Tickets are sold out for the contest, however standing room only tickets will go on sale at the box office beginning at 11:30 a.m. Those who purchase standing room only tickets will not be allowed to enter the arena until 3:30.
Saturday's game is also a Salute to Service while the first 300 students in attendance will receive a free Geaux Pokes jersey t-shirt.
McNeese (20-3, 9-1 SLC) holds a 1 ½-game lead over both the Islanders and Nicholls in the conference standings. Saturday's game will be the second meeting of the season against the two-time defending league champions for the Cowboys. McNeese rallied from an 18-point deficit with 13 minutes to play to defeat the Islanders in dramatic fashion, 62-61, when
Christian Shumate laid in a missed tip-in with less than a second remaining. The win snapped a 16-game losing streak to AMCC.
The Cowboys reached the 20-win mark for just the ninth time as a Division I school when they defeated Texas A&M-Commerce, 77-61, last Monday. It's the 12
th time in school history to post a 20-win season and the first since the 2010-11 slate when McNeese finished 21-12 and won the conference title the most recent time.
Four Cowboys are averaging double-figures in scoring, led by
Shahada Wells with an 18.0 per game average. Wells was recently named by ESPN as one of the top transfers in the country and has been putting up Player of the Year numbers all season.
He's currently ranked second in the league in both scoring and with 4.5 assists per game. In addition, he's No. 1 in the conference and fourth in the NCAA with 3.0 steals per game and fifth in the nation with 65 total steals, a number that ranks time tied for seventh as the most in school history in a single-season.
Wells has scored double-figures 18 times in his 22 games played this season, seven of those going for 20 points or more and three of those at 30-plus points.
Shumate is second on the team and 14
th in the league with a 12.2 scoring average and leads the conference in rebounding with a 9.4 mark. He tops the conference and is 21
st in the nation with 3.4 offensive rebounds per game.
Rounding out the starting five will be
Javohn Garcia (10.3 ppg),
Omar Cooper (4.7 ppg, 3.4 apg), and
Antavion Collum (9.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg).
The Cowboys have been playing a nine-player rotation ever since
Mike Saunders Jr. added to the loop. Saunders Jr. (7.6 ppg, 2.1 apg) along with
DJ Richards Jr. (11.1 ppg),
CJ Felder (6.1 ppg, 3.8 rpg), and
Cameron Jones (4.2 ppg) will round out that rotation.
The Islanders are led by Garry Clark's 11.5 scoring and 8.2 rebounding averages.
