Seahawks snag big win, 68-63

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Seahawks snag big win, 68-63

By Tom Halliburton

The Port Arthur News

Good times have never been so good for basketball at Lamar State College-Port Arthur.

  By defeating North Lake College 68-63 on Wednesday night at Carl Parker Center, the Seahawks have positioned themselves in a posture to play their most important home games in school history just around the corner.

  Never in the history of the school has LSCPA been able to host a post-season tournament game in their competitive Metro Athletic Conference, but the Bluebirds have a terrific opportunity to accomplish that.

  The Seahawks (12-14 and 5-6) complete their regular season Saturday at home against Mountain View College's Lions (10-16, 3-8). Lamar-Port Arthur outlasted Mountain View 93-84 in overtime on Jan. 30 at Dallas. A win on Saturday would assure the Seahawks of hosting a first-round tournament game for the first time in school history.

  That's the kind of strides which coach Don Bryson, Andre Boutte, Jr., George Williamson, Sam Stelly, Noah Cole, Cody Guidry and company have made in the program's fourth season.

  Bryson predominantly kept LSCPA in a 2-3 zone for most of the night. Obviously that ploy made Lamar-Port Arthur more vulnerable than anything to the three-point outside shot.

  "They only made seven threes against us," Bryson chirped afterwards. "It seems like everybody likes to shoot the threes against us."

  Leading only 31-30 at halftime, the hosts established a more comfortable cushion early in the second half. They leaned on a balanced contribution from five double-digit scorers -- Vidor sophomore George Williamson led all scorers and rebounders with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Cole followed with 12 points, while the trio of Guidry, Stelly and Boutte delivered 10 points each.

  Boutte absolutely came up big on the boards with nine. His move to the inside from the perimeter has been significant in Lamar Port Arthur's recent second-half outings.

  "We moved P-Nut inside and he's really helped us," Bryson said. "We did a pretty good job on defense to hold them to 63 points.

  "We probably outrebounded them (for the game) but they had a lot more offensive rebounds and they got us bad at the end."

  The Seahawks almost failed to finish off the Irving-based Blazers (13-15, 7-4) in this game. A 62-53 advantage may have seemed secure as LSCPA would take a nine-point lead into the last two minutes but missed Port Arthur free throws made it harder for the Seahawks to seal the deal.

  Brian Sanders led the North Lake score sheet with 19 points followed by Jordan Alexander with 13.

  Lamar State College Port Arthur missed six foul shots in the last two minutes -- as in six of eight.

  "We didn't make our free throws down the stretch, but any time you can do that and survive, that's good," Bryson said.

[DP#1FAN]

Congrats Seahawks on the win.

[LamarStatesports]

Tom Halliburton must have misunderstood what Coach Bryson told him about the Metro Conference tournament.

No matter what the outcome of last night's game and Saturday's up-coming game, Lamar State College-Port Arthur will not be hosting any tournament games.

The conference champion (not yet determined) gets a bye in the first round (Wednesday), while No. 2 plays No. 7, No. 3 plays No. 6, and No. 4 plays No. 5 at the home court of the No. 2 seed.

The second round (Thursday) is played on the home court of the conference champion, which has to loose twice to be eliminated from competition.

Because all of the other MAC schools are in Dallas, the conference made special plans for a scenario where Lamar State might win the conference. If that had happened, the second round games would have been played at "a pre-determined site," whatever that means. But it would have been in Dallas.

North Lake could have staked a claim to the championship if they won last night and went to 8-3. But they now are 7-4 and stuck in a possible three-way tie with Eastfield (7-3, no results available yet for last night's game against Richland) and Brookhaven (7-4), which was off last night.

The tie-breaker scenario will make your eyes glaze over. We'll leave that to MAC officials to sort out.

Regardless of the outcome of Saturday's game against Mountain View, Lamar State will play Richland at 4 p.m. Wednesday somewhere in Dallas. The Seahawks edged the Lions, 80-76, in Port Arthur early in the season, but dropped the game in Dallas, 83-60.

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