WILLIAMSBURG, Ky. – The worst offensive game of the season for Campbellsville men's basketball resulted in the first loss for the Tigers as Xavier University of Louisiana won the first game of the Cumberlands Classic 68-66.
The deciding play of the game was the final Gold Rush possession of the game as XULA's Rayshawn Mart drove the length of the floor with six seconds left, drawing a foul on CU's
Ronald Taylor with 1.4 seconds left on the clock. Mart followed up by hitting both free throws giving the Gold Rush the lead and eventually the win.
The final two minutes of the game went back and forth excitingly with each team trading baskets before
Jacob King missed a contested shot for the Tigers with about 30 seconds left. That was followed up by Xavier's Willian Loyd hitting a contested layup over
Andrew Smith off the glass to go up 66-64 with 12 seconds left.
Needing a basket, head coach
Brent Vernon drew up a play for
Hagen Tyler. Tyler brought the ball up the floor, passed to Smith at the top of the key then received the handoff back from Smith, opening up a lane for a left-handed layup that Tyler hit to tie the game at 66-66 with those final six seconds remaining.
Not only was the 66 points a season-low for CU but they also shot a season low 40.3 percent from the field and grabbed a season-low 35 rebounds in the game.
Keeping the Tigers in the game was the outstanding second half from Tyler who scored 29 in the game, 24 in the second half alone. Tyler, who was coming off of a career-high 37 points in CU's last game, showed some signs of rust in the first half before exploding for 69-percent of the Campbellsville points in the second 20 minutes of play.
The game was tight the whole way as neither team built a double-digit lead with Xavier's biggest lead getting up to five points and Campbellsville's largest lead being eight points in the second half. There were also 11 lead changes and 11 ties in the game with many of the lead changes coming in the first 25 minutes of the game and a lot of the ties coming in the final two minutes.
The Tigers won't have a lot of time to dwell on their first loss of the season as they will have a quick turnaround for their second and final game of the Cumberlands Classic. They will take on Freed-Hardeman University tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. ET as CU will hope to end non-conference play with only one loss.
