CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas _ A season-high 15 three-pointers was not enough to get the University of Central Arkansas Bears past the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders on Wednesday night in their Southland Conference opener.
The Islanders (6-8, 1-0) made 27 of 35 at the free-throw line _ 22 of 26 in the second half _ to pull away for an 87-75 victory at the American Bank Center.
The Bears (5-9, 0-1) erased a 16-point first-half deficit and tied the game with 8:15 to play but the Islanders took control again, outscoring UCA 24-12 the rest of the way. A&M-CC scored 18 of those points at the free-throw line. UCA finished the game 10 of 12 from the stripe.
"Our effort early on was absolutely pathetic,' said UCA head coach Russ Pennell. "I was about as disappointed in a team as I have been in a long time. Because you get the chance to compete for something that we've been talking about for awhile. You would think the excitement of that would lead to really great effort. I thought Corpus Christi was the aggressor, I thought they ran downhill, I thought we were back on our heels. And we just didn't respond very well until we got behind.
"I'm glad we didn't quit and I'm glad we got the score tied. But we had several chances to get the lead. And sometimes we just play to play, and we've got to figure out how to play to win. And that's what I just challenged them with in the locker room. It's easy to say you want to win. It's easy to say you want to have a good program, you want to do all these things.
"But it costs you something. It's going to be an effort-type thing if you're ever going to get something done. You have to take it, no one is going to hand it to you.'
The Bears connected on 15 of 31 from three-point range, including a 5-of-7 effort from sophomore point guard DeAndre Jones and a 4-of-8 night from senior Thatch Unruh. UCA actually shot better (48.4 percent) from beyond the arc than overall (42.4). But UCA was also outrebounded 43-29, with the Islanders getting 12 offensive rebounds and the Bears just four.
"You have to go to the glass,' Pennell said. "Again, that's an effort thing. If you look at all the stats... if we hadn't shot threes well, we would have gotten beat 25. So that's a misleading stat because you're not going to hit 50 percent from the three-point line most nights. But we did, and it gave us a chance. But you have to win the effort plays.'
Jones led the Bears with 22 points, tying A&M-CC's Kareem South for game-high honors, before fouling out with 2:15 left. Unruh added 14 points and sophomore center Hayden Koval had 12 while battling foul trouble as well. Koval and junior Aaron Weidenaar made two three-pointers each as six Bears connected from long range, including three consecutive threes from Jones late in the first half that cut UCA's halftime deficit to 42-34.
The Islanders, who broke a three-game losing streak, shot 45.2 percent and topped their season scoring average by nearly 20 points. They entered the game 10th in the SLC at 67.2 points per game.
UCA continues its opening road trip on Saturday, taking on the Southeastern Louisiana Lions at 4 p.m. in Hammond, La.
