The Prairie View men’s basketball team figuratively showed up late to the game against the Jackson State Tigers and it cost them a victory, losing 60-48 in the Baby Dome in front of 1,928 fans. Starting for the Panthers were forwards Dominique Sharpe and Oscar Thompson, center Blaise Louh, and guards Clyde Pride and Phillip Scott. PVAMU couldn’t muster any kind of offense in the first half of the game, as evidenced by their 16.7% shooting from the field. Defensively, the Panthers played the first half marvelously, flustering Jackson State into committing 16 turnovers. The first half also saw the Panthers commit twice as many turnovers (10) as shots made (5). Sharpe led the Panthers in scoring with five points in the first half. At one point, Jackson State went up by 16 points after guard Dakari Wallace nailed a three-pointer. Prairie View finished the first half trailing 27-14.
At the start of the second half, a new and more focused Panther team took the court and let the Tigers know that they were going to be in for a close one. Jackson State took a game-high 18 point lead on a tip by forward Ernest Hassell at the 14:04 mark of the second half. Over the next eight minutes, Prairie View went on a 23-8 scoring run led by reserves Anthony Oha, Jared Ellison, Marlon Davis and Jason Breckenridge to bring themselves to within three points. PVAMU and JSU traded baskets until Phillip Scott nailed a three-pointer to bring PV’s deficit down to four points. Unfortunately, the four points was as close as Prairie View got, as Jackson State forced some turnovers and nailed their free throws down the stretch to seal the tough road victory.
Head Coach Jerome Francis summed up the game afterwards by giving his take. “Stemming from last year and continuing into this year, we struggle on Mondays. We give great energy on Saturday and then on Monday we just fall short with the effort, the intensity and the energy. We have to give Coach Anderson and his staff a lot of credit. They came in here and handled us pretty good with toughness and aggressiveness. I asked referee Byron Evans after the game ‘What could we have done to improve?’ and he said ‘Coach, you got the fire, but your kids don’t.’ I thought that was a great comment because when the referee sees us playing tentative, they aren’t going to give you the calls.”
In the second half when the Panthers came within three points after trailing by as many as 18 only to fall short, the players were understandably saddened. “I told the kids not to say hello when it’s time to say goodbye. We got to take care of our work early, pack our lunch early. We didn’t do our work early and got down by a big deficit and then when it’s time to make a run, we’ve dug ourselves into a big hole. We’re a young team and it’s my job to make sure that we make every one of our possessions count,” Francis added.