Bears
Another game, another player out with injury for Bears
With another key player having to set out game, UCA calls on players without much time against Austin Peay
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Another day, another injury for Central Arkansas.
UCA played Saturday without another starter when sophomore point guard Brayden Fagbemi sat out due to back spasms, joining a lengthy list of six players who were not available in a 90-67 loss on the road at Austin Peay.
Leading scorers Layne Taylor and Elias Cato were also out of the lineup again and forced the UCA coaching staff to get creative with their offense and bench.
The Bears chose to run their revamped offense through freshman center Nehemiah Turner, and he responded in a big way wth a career-high 23 points, making 11 of 14 at the free-throw line.
His previous career high was 12 points. The 6-foot-11 center from Auburndale, Fla., played a season-high 28 minutes.
“Like (assistant coach) Max (Shulman) just said, very few times in your basketball career or life do you get this. Some of these guys are getting opportunities of a lifetime right now,” said UCA coach John Shulman. “And it stinks for our team. But all of a sudden Nemo gets thrown into this situation where you’ve got limited guys on the roster, are you going to take advantage of it or not? And good gracious, he’s taken advantage of it.
“And just think about Nemo now and then Nemo three weeks ago. Hey, Elias (Cato) is going to be back here in a little bit, and Brayden is going to be back, then you start thinking about what does he look like next year. Their (APSU) center, (Sai) Witt, is a 25-year-old graduate student, and Nemo is a freshman. So I’m really, really proud of Nemo.”
UCA also played several walk-ons for extended minutes along with normal starters Cole McCormick and Michael Evbagharu, who finished with 9 points and 8 rebounds. Sophomore D.J. Seixas drew the start in Fagbami’s place and had 5 points and 7 rebounds. Redshirt freshman Ben Fox added 9 points (3 threes) as all 11 players who dressed out saw action for the Bears.
The Bears drew 11 fouls and shot 13 free-throws in the first half, but made just six. UCA made four three-pointers in the opening five minutes of the game, two from Fox and one each from McCormick and Evbagharu and was down 16-15 with 14:50 left in the half.
The Governors then put together a 15-3 scoring run to push their lead to 28-17 at the midway point of the half. UCA cut the defiicit back to five with four points from Turner and a dunk by McCormick. APSU nailed two more three-pointers in the final five minutes to take a 46-32 lead to the locker room.
“Are you going to be mad at Ethan Thomas, you going to be mad at Connor Mancell, you going to be mad at OD (Owen Dehrmann),” said Shulman. They came in and did a wonderful job. And Glo (Glory Etim) gave us some great minutes late. I’m happy for them.
“It kind of stinks going through this, and nobody wants to go through this. But we’re going to hopefully get a couple healthy soon. But I was proud of our kids’ effort because it’s a really hard time right now. But the nice thing is, we have really good memories. It ain’t going to be like this long. We’re just going through a tough time.
“I tell you this, if we didn’t have elite culture right now, we would be having major problems. While all this crap is going on, we’ve still got to win the day. I thought we won the day. We didn’t win the game, but we stayed together and kept batlting. You talk about a perfect time to separate? This was a great time to separate. And we’re not.
“This is going to pay dividends. It doesn’t feel real good right now, But I know it will pay dividends down the road.”
Thomas had 9 points and 4 assists off the bench, while Derhmann and Mancell both played career high minutes. The Governors made 17 (of 42) three-point shots and got 27 points from Tate McCubbin.
UCA returns home for two games next week, hosting Jacksonville on Thursday night and North Florida on Saturday afternoon.
