DALLAS, Texas — SMU Men’s Basketball won their 3rd straight Southland Conference matchup Wednesday night, beating Houston Baptist 102-75 making them 3-0 early in the season. The Mustangs have won all 7 of their matchups with the Huskies. HBU falls to 0-3 overall, having faced a tough non-conference slate of strictly power 5 conference teams.
The Mustangs are 41-4 in home regular season non-conference games under Tim Jankovich, who’s in his 5th year as Head Coach. SMU opened with back-to-back 30+ point wins over Sam Houston State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Mustang’s guard, Kendric Davis earned a spot on the American Athletic Conference weekly honor roll for his career high, 33-pt performance against Sam Houston State last week and continued to shine this week. Davis’ averaging over 20-points per game so far this year.
1st half play was high scoring for both teams, with the Mustangs taking a 49-45 lead into the break. Both teams ended the 1st half in some foul trouble with 10 team fouls. Senior forward, Ethan Chargois scored 18 of SMU’s 1st half points.
The Mustangs broke away from the Huskies early in the 2nd half. SMU’s offense has been the most consistent aspect of SMU’s game so far, scoring at least 90-points in each of their 3 games. Leading the Mustangs in scoring, Davis and Chargois both finished with 20-points. Davis also had 13-assists, earning him back-to-back double doubles.
SMU Head Coach Tim Jankovich wasn’t pleased with his teams’ defensive performance early in the game, adding that they have, “A ways to go to be a great team defensively,” but he was proud of the way they stepped up in the second half.
After the game, SMU announced their game against Vanderbilt, which was scheduled for Tuesday, December 8th has been cancelled because of a Covid-19 outbreak within the Commodores program. SMU will finish their non-conference schedule at Dayton on Saturday.
American Athletic Conference games begin December 16th continuing through the beginning of March. Each AAC team will play a 20-game league schedule, in a double round-robin format. The conference tournament will be March 11th-14th at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. The Mustangs were picked 3rd in preseason rankings.
