CONWAY, Ark. _ The New Orleans Privateers used a 15-2 run midway through the second half to pull away to an 81-63 victory over the University of Central Arkansas Bears on Saturday afternoon at the Farris Center.

    The first-place Privateers (11-7, 6-1) placed four players in double figures and shot 55.4 percent from the field for the game to strengthen their hold on first place in the SLC. UNO also dominated the rebounding by a 39-22 margin. UCA, playing its first home game since Jan. 2, dropped its third consecutive league game and is now 4-16 overall and 3-4 in SLC play.

    UCA trailed 56-51 with 10:22 to play, but the Privateers scored 15 of the next 17 points to grab a 71-53 lead with 5:58 to play. The Bears, who shot just 41.1 percent from the field for the game, could not get closer than 14 points the rest of the way.

    "I think the big thing was the rebounding,' said UCA head coach Russ Pennell. "We didn't do a very good job on the glass. Everything they do is through the paint, and I thought in the first half we did a pretty good in that, but the second half we didn't. 

    "And that kind of bled over into the offense. I thought we kind of had a stretch there where we didn't get good shots and we weren't organized and we didn't get into our sets. And put all that together and it's a defeat like you saw.'

    UCA battled UNO evenly in the first half and a three-pointer that just beat the buzzer by senior guard Jeff Lowery drew the Bears within 34-32 at the break. Junior Mathieu Kamba scored 14 of his team-high 18 points in the opening 20 minutes. The Privateers outshot and outrebounded the Bears in the half but could not pull away as UCA forced seven UNO turnovers and scored nine points off them. 

    "They are really physical, and you have to be tough to play against them,' said Pennell. "I thought they just really pushed us around on the inside, and I don't mean fouling wise. We just weren't aggressive enough and they were. Usually when you play hard, good things happen. You get loose balls, you get second-chance points. And I think we got beat at those things.

    "And that's probably what disappoints me the most, we got beat on the 50-50 balls and the tough plays.'

    Kamba, a junior from Calgary, Alberta, was the most aggressive of the Bears, finishing with 18 points and 6 rebounds and recording several hustle plays in 34 minutes of action.

    "He was, and I don't think the second half we got the ball to him quite enough,' said Pennell. "It seemed like we just got out of sync offensively. Even the timeouts, we would come out of them, and there were two or three times that what we called, we didn't do. So those are things we have to correct and try to figure out.'

    Pennell said when the Bears got behind, they did not seem to have enough fight to come back.

    "I was trying to get them going. I just felt like at the timeouts they were down,' he said. "You can't look at a scoreboard or your situation and think that it's over. I felt like we dropped our head because we know this is a first-place team and we're playing at home for the first time in awhile. Some times we over-think it. We just need to play. I was trying to get that across but it was kind of like pulling teeth tonight.'

    Howard, the No. 2 scorer in the SLC behind Thomas, was held to just two shots and two points in the first half but finished with 14 points, hitting a pair of three-pointers. He has now made a three-pointer in 60 consecutive games and scored in double figures in 74 of the 77 games he has played in as a Bear. 

    The Privateers, who entered the game as the worst three-point shooting team in the SLC, made 7 of 15 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc, including two each from Christavious Gill, Nate Frye and Jorge Rosa. Erik Thomas, the leading scorer in the conference, and Frye had 16 points each for UNO, while Tevin Broyles and Travin Thibodeaux added 12 apiece, with Thibodeaux pulling down a game-high 12 rebounds.

    The Bears, who were coming off a four-game road swing, hit the road again on Wednesday, facing Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, Texas, at 8 p.m., before returning home for five consecutive games beginning next Saturday against Incarnate Word.