CONWAY, Ark. _ The University of Central Arkansas Bears put together one of their best halves of the season Saturday and used it to down the No. 2 Nicholls Colonels 84-65 in Southland Conference action in front of a season high crowd of 2,912 at the Farris Center.

The Bears (10-18, 9-8), battling for a spot in the SLC postseason tournament and sitting in sixth place entering the day, dominated the first half against the second-place Colonels (18-10, 12-5) and took their biggest halftime lead of the season at 41-18. UCA shot 53.8 percent from the field in the opening 20 minutes and held Nicholls to 24.2-percent shooting, including 1 of 12 from three-point range. The Bears also had a dominated 29-10 rebound advantage at the half, and 48-21 for the game.

"That first half was incredible,' said UCA interim head coach Anthony Boone. "Our guys were focused. And we're going to have to keep increasing those minutes when we play defense like that. The second half wasn't as good, we turned the ball over a little bit and gave them some easy chances. But overall, our defense was really, really good this afternoon.'

The Bears led for nearly 18 minutes of the first half before settling for the 23-point advantage at halftime. Junior guard Rylan Bergersen scored 17 of his game-high and career-high 25 points, including a pair of three-pointers, in the first half to lead the Bears' offensive effort. Defensively, UCA shut down the Colonels, particularly their leading scorer Dexter McClanahan, who had just two points on 1 of 5 shooting at the break.

"That was our strategy, to kind of shut down the driving lanes and make them shoot jump shots,' said Boone. "They're really good about getting into the paint and then kicking out for wide-open threes. But we didn't give them as many of those because we challenged our guys to play one-on-one defense better today. And they did a good job of that, especially in the first half.'

The Colonels, who won the first meeting 79-72 last month in Thibodaux with a huge second-half comeback, came back again Saturday to get within nine points with 8:30 remaining but the Bears hit their free throws and got a spark from junior Jared Chatham to hold them off. UCA made 23 of 27 (85.2 percent) at the free-throw line, including 14 of 16 in the second half. Chatham, a junior from Los Angeles, Calif., scored eight points during a decisive stretch in the second half, with a pair of alley-oop dunks. He turned in his first career double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds in 17 minutes of action.

"We said (in the second half, just keep attacking in the paint, keep trying to get the ball inside,' Boone said. "And we tried to speed up just a little bit. We were playing a little bit conservative like we did down there and giving them a chance to trap us and to turn us over. We just attacked and got into the paint and got to the free-throw line and got some easy baskets. That was how we extended it.'

The Bears also led the Colonels at the half in the first meeting, but were outscored 49-29 in the second half of that game.

"We knew they came back from 16 or 17 (points) down against Northwestern their last game,' said UCA junior center Hayden Koval. "And then we were up 23, and we were like, 'do not let them back in this game.' They beat us something like 40 last year and were were reminded of that. We did not want that to happen again. They went on their little run and we got in some foul trouble but we recovered.

"The bench came up huge, Jared came up huge. He played great down the stretch and that's what helped us pull out the win.' 

Bergersen had 25 points and Koval added 21 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocked shots. Junior point guard DeAndre Jones had 8 points, 5 rebounds and 7 assists before fouling out with 4:52 remaining and UCA holding a 73-57 lead. Nicholls lost two starters, Kevin Johnson and Warith Alatishe, to fouls. McClanahan led the Colonels with 20 points while Andre Jones and Alatishe added 15 points each.

UCA had six players with at least four rebounds while Nicholls had only one player with as many as five.

"The guys were really intent on beating them on the glass,' said Boone. "We haven't done it like this in awhile. We said we really need to have a game like we did a while back where we really dominated the rebounding. The guys took the challenge and reallly executed today.'

UCA has a bye on Wednesday before traveling to third-place Abilene Christian on Saturday, trying to avenge an overtime loss to the Wildcats at the Farris Center back on Jan. 25.