LAKE CHARLES – McNeese's general, Javohn Garcia, saved the best game of his career for his final one played in the Townsley Law Arena as he scored a career-high 31 points to lead McNeese to a 76-59 romp over Stephen F. Austin in the Southland Conference Tournament championship game to record a March Madness Hat Trick as the Cowboys win their third-straight tournament title and the league's NCAA automatic bid.
 
Garcia, who missed the final two weeks of the regular season with a knee injury, scored 25 of those points in the first half, making his first seven shots with five of those from behind the three-point arc as the Cowboys built a double-digit lead with seven minutes to play in the half and never looked back. He was named the tournament MVP and to the all-tournament team along with Larry Johnson and Tyshawn Archie.
 
The win was the 10^th-straight for McNeese who improves to 28-5 overall, and even though the Cowboys were the visiting team at technically a neutral site, McNeese won for the 28^th-straight time in the Townsley Law Arena in front of a record crowd 5,272 fans.

Head coach Bill Armstrong becomes the first coach in league history to earn an NCAA Tournament bid in his first season as a Division I head coach.
 
McNeese will learn its seed and destination for the NCAA Tournament on Sunday at 5 p.m. Details on a watch party will be released in the coming days.
 
Things got out to a bang for McNeese from the start when Garwey Dual fed Jerrell Colbert a lob pass for the alley-oop dunk 38 seconds into the game.
 
Garcia, who connected on 11 of 18 from the field including 5 for 8 from three-point range, sank his first 3 at the 14:32 mark of the first half to put the Cowboys up 7-3 early. He knocked down his next six shots, four of those from long range include three straight, over the next 12 minutes as McNeese's lead grew to 38-29 with 3:08 to play in the half.
 
SFA (28-5), the league's regular season champion and No. 1 tournament seed, had trouble all game against McNeese's quick and shifty defense that held the Lumberjacks to 37 percent from the floor (19-51) and 24 percent from behind the arc (5-21).
 
McNeese led 42-25 at the half with Garcia accounting for 25 of those points.
 
The Cowboys continued to press the gas both offensively and defensive in the second half and never allowed SFA to string together a run any better than five points.
 
McNeese took its largest lead of the game at the 10:02 mark when Johnson knocked down a 3 to make it 67-43. Johnson ended the night with 18 points while Archie added 17 with five assists and five steals. Yanis Ndjonga led the team with seven rebounds coming off the bench.
 
SFA cut the margin to 17 points, 69-52, with 7:19 remaining, only to see McNeese quickly squash its mini-run with five straight points ending with an emphatic Johnson fast break dunk to make it 74-52 with 4:59 to play.
 
The Cowboys shot 52 percent for the game (28-54) and hit 9 of 18 for 50 percent from three-point range. McNeese dominated the glass, out-rebounding the Lumberjacks by a 37-24 margin.