STEPHENVILLE, Texas— Tarleton State Men's Basketball held off a furious final minute Abilene Christian rally for a 79-71 victory in the first edition of the I-20 rivalry of 2024 in Wisdom Gym on Thursday Night.
 
With the win, the Texans find themselves 11-6 overall and 4-2 in WAC play. The Wildcats (6-11, 1-5 WAC) drop their third-straight conference game.
 
Jakorie Smith led the team in scoring with a game-high 25 points. The senior also gathered five rebounds. Lue Williams and KiAndre Gaddy were the other two Texans to finish in double-figures with 15 apiece. Gaddy also co-led the Texans with two blocks with Traivar Jackson.
 
Emmanuel Innocenti posted a game-high nine boards with eight coming on the defensive glass. Off the bench, Miles Lewis and Adam Moussa led the Texans with four assists each. Devon Barnes led the team with three takeaways.
 
The Wildcats started the game on a 5-0 run to claim their only lead of the contest. The Texans responded with a 10-0 run of their own. Williams scored six straight by himself. After splitting a pair of free throws, he drove the lane for a layup to tie the game at five. Williams picked a Wildcats pocket and drove to the hoop for the bucket and the foul. He converted the free throw to give the Texans the lead for the first time.
 
The two teams traded buckets with the score knotted at 18 at the midpoint of the first half. Barnes buried a triple to put the Texans up permanently, 21-18.
 
Scoreless in the first 11 minutes, Smith found his groove in the final nine of the first half dropping 13 points including a pair of triples. He accounted for 13 of the Texans' 17 points in that span to take a 40-30 lead at the break.
 
The Texans found themselves in control for the majority of the second half and was able to mute the Wildcats final push. Smith found the bottom of the net from beyond the arc for the fourth time to give Tarleton its biggest lead of the night, 15, leading 52-37 four minutes into the second half of action.
 
When the clock dropped below eight minutes remaining, madness started to break out. Gaddy picked up his fourth and fifth fouls of the contest on a shooting foul, then picking up a dead ball technical foul. Gaddy was not the only player to be tagged with a technical as Airion Simmons also was gifted one, which will be important later. Tarleton maintained a double-digit lead until a pair of Wildcat free throws at the 7:06 mark cut the lead to 66-58.
 
Less than a minute later, Simmons would earn another technical for his second of the game, earning himself the rest of the night in the locker room. Free throw miscues then hit the Texans with Smith missing both technical freebies and Williams missing the front end of his one-and-one on the original Simmons shooting foul.
 
Jackson pulled the Texans ahead by 11 on an aggressive dunk off a pass from Moussa with 3:39 remaining. The Wildcats weren't tossing the white flag yet and cut their deficit to four on a layup, triple and pair of free throws. The Texans traded baskets with the Wildcats who were hanging around still trailing by four with less than a minute to go. Williams and Moussa iced the game for the Texans each making a pair of free throws in the final minute to give Tarleton an eight-point advantage. Moussa called a critical timeout while Texans' guards were trapped and almost given a ten second violation. Moussa and Barnes picked up steals in the final thirty to stave off the late rally for a 79-71 victory.
 
For the 28^th time in the Division I era, the Texans shot over 50 percent from floor improving their record to 28-0 when accomplishing the feat. Tarleton shot 30-for-57 at a 53 percent rate. The Texans also shot 6-for-15 from deep with Smith converting four. The two schools each committed nine turnovers. The Purple and White won the battle of the boards, 37-33.
 
Tarleton will hit the road south to take on the UTRGV Vaqueros on Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m. at the UTRGV Fieldhouse. In both programs' second WAC game of the season, the Texans were 77-75 victors in Wisdom Gym thanks to a Smith buzzer-beating triple that found the bottom of the net.