HOUSTON – Carl Cherenfant's layup and-1 with 1:37 to play then Larry Johnson's two-handed Johnson Jam with 46 seconds remaining capped off a stellar second half for the McNeese Cowboys as they defeated HCU 78-68 here Monday night for their fourth-straight win.
 
McNeese improves to 10-2 overall and 3-1 in Southland Conference play while notching its first road league win of the season. HCU (5-6, 1-2) dropped its second consecutive home league game and fourth straight to the Cowboys.
 
Johnson led all scorers with 22 points, his fourth 20-point game of the season, scoring 13 of those in the second half to help McNeese outscore HCU 45-28 in the final 20 minutes. DJ Richards Jr. added 14 points, 10 in the second half. Jerrell Colbert finished with 12 points and a team-high seven rebounds, and Javohn Garcia added 11 points.
 
Trailing 40-33 at the half, McNeese scored the first 10 points of the second half to grab its first lead of the game. And when adding in the final three of the first half, McNeese used a 14-0 run to take a lead it held for the entire second half but just once. That occurred when HCU's Trent Johnson made a 3 with 9:01 to play that gave his team the lead back at 56-54 but Richards answered quickly with a 3 of his own to put McNeese back on top for good.
 
Colbert scored four of the 10 points in that 10-0 run to start the second half and added a big dunk with 5:29 to play to give McNeese a 65-60 lead. He added two free throws less than a minute later to make it a seven-point game.
 
HCU climbed back to within 71-66 with 2:04 remaining but the Cowboys answered with five straight points, three on a Carl Cherenfant layup and-1 then Johnson with a break-away dunk.
 
Richards closed out the scoring with a couple of free throws with 35 seconds left.
 
McNeese made 18 of its 28 shots for 64 percent in the second half and ended the night making 59 percent (32-54) for the game. HCU made 22 of 55 for 40 percent for the contest but was held to just 9 of 25 shooting for 36 percent in the second half.
 
HCU led 40-33 at the half in what turned into a three-point game as the Huskies hit 6 of 14 from long range. McNeese got a three from Larry Johnson with four seconds to play in the half to close the gap to seven points before the horn sounded.
 
The Huskies built a nine-point, 25-16 lead with 9:02 remaining in the half after Kylin Green made three free throws.
 
The Cowboys scored the next four points off a dunk from Garwey Dual and a jumper from Johnson, then later pulled to within 30-28 following a Johnson layup with 3:36 remaining. But a layup and free throw for HCU's Elijah Brooks built the lead back to five.
 
HCU rolled off 10 straight points to build a 40-30 lead before Johnson's 3 ended the run.
 
McNeese will be off from competition until December 29 when it visits Michigan then will return to conference play on Jan. 2 when it hosts Lamar in a nationally televised game on CBS Sports.