Weber State Wildcats end Texas Arlington's 16-game win streak

OGDEN — The Texas Arlington men's basketball team probably won't be scheduling any more trips to Utah any time soon.

And that's too bad, because the visiting Mavericks and the Wildcats of Weber State put on a mighty entertaining show in their BracketBuster matchup Saturday night at the Dee Events Center.

Weber State pulled out a narrow 72-70 victory, snapping the Texas team's 16-game winning streak in a game which wasn't decided until the final, frantic second when the Mavericks stole the ball and put up a last-gasp, 3-point bomb that missed as an appreciative crowd of 8,952 held its collective breath. As it turned out, the shot was ruled to have been taken after the final buzzer anyhow.

The Wildcats (22-4, 13-1 Big Sky) ran their home-court record this season to 15-0 — the best unbeaten home mark in school history — as they prepare to finish conference regular-season play with games on the road at Northern Colorado and Montana, needing to win them both for the right to host the Big Sky postseason tournament March 8-9.

The Southland Conference-leading Texas Arlington (20-6, 12-0) hadn't been beaten since suffering a December setback at Utah State.

"That second half, it was just a good old-fashioned fist fight," said WSU coach Randy Rahe. "(It was) two teams trying to play really hard and compete and just do whatever it took to win, and we just happened to hold on there towards the end.

"I thought the story of the second half was I thought we rebounded better, and I thought we defended them a little bit better, but I thought the 3-point shot for us was huge in the second half, and we were able to knock some down (10-of-20 after intermission). ... And we needed every one of those 3s tonight.

"Any time you play in these types of games, it makes you better," Rahe said. "And we're still trying to get better as a team."

Junior guard Scott Bamforth, who was 1-of-6 from 3-point range in first half, got it going after halftime, knocking down 4-of-6 shots from beyond the arc on the way to a game-high 19 points. He hit three 3s in a row in a 14-0 run early in the second half that turned the Wildcats six-point deficit into an eight-point lead.

"I just stayed confident; we always stay confident," Bamforth said. "We just shared the ball so well and I ended up being open, and I was able to knock some down in the second half."