Bulldogs look strong in mid-week win over McNeese

Talvin Hester believes in crunch time, it’s always the tougher team that comes out on top.

When things don’t go according to plan, who adapts? Punched in the mouth and on the verge of reeling? It’s always the team with the stronger connectivity and grit that prevails in the eyes of the second-year head coach of the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs.

Consider Tech that kind of team after a hard-fought 71-62 win over McNeese State (5-2) on Wednesday at the Thomas Assembly Center, improving to 4-1 on the season.

It's a sharp contrast to the team's 81-73 loss at Colorado State to open the season - a game Tech lead by as many as 10 - but it's the change the Bulldogs knew they had to make if they wanted this season to go differently.

And despite Isaiah Crawford and Jaylin Henderson, Tech’s two leading scorers, combining for 7 points on 1-of-9 shooting, the Bulldogs’ veteran roster makeup showed out with Tyler Henry and Tahlik Chavez each putting up 14 points with effective three- point shooting, and Sean Newman Jr. adding 11 points and 7 assists.

And in only his third game as a Bulldog, Daniel Batcho’s gamehigh 17 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 blocked shots helped carry the Bulldogs to their fourth- straight win over a scrappy Cowboys squad.

“I thought it was a tough game. We needed one,” Hester said postgame. “I really contribute some of the scheduling to it. Coach (Tim) McGraw, some of those guys, convinced me to challenge ourselves early and to see who we are — taking a Colorado State game early to play a tough one and kind of get prepared for something like this. I’m glad we did. We didn’t make light of the moment. We were prepared. We made practice hard so these moments would be manageable for us and I’m just proud of every guy on this team.”

In an inverse of Tuesday’s 67-53 win over Southern Utah, Tech relied on its outside shooting against Mc-Neese to combat a big zone defense that kept Crawford and others from finding lanes to work inside. But it was to the Bulldogs’ advantage, connecting on three of their first five three-pointers. On paper going in, it seemed if anyone was going to let it rain from the outside it would be Mc-Neese, who entered the contest shooting 42.3% from three – top 20 in the country.

The Bulldogs held them to 6-of-22 (27.3%) from three.

With hot shooting early and unselfish offense, as Tech cashed assists on five of its first six shots, the home team jumped ahead for a brief period before the Cowboys used an 8-0 run to claim a 1815 lead. But as threes were traded between the teams, the game was tied at 27-27 with under four minutes left in the first half. That is until Henry knocked down one of his three threepointers of the half to give his team a 30-27 lead before going on to outscore the Cowboys 5-2 over the final three minutes to pull ahead 35-29 at the break.

“We’re getting prepared for March,” Henry said. “That’s what our coach has been talking about since the summer. Everything is in preparation for March. Win, lose, obviously we want to win every game, but everything is to prepare for what’s coming in March. He said he doesn’t want a spring break, so I guess I don’t want one either.”

Tech’s aggressive to start the second half seemed to rattle Mc-Neese as the Cowboys opened the first three minutes with three turnovers and three made shots to give Tech a 42-34 lead. The Cowboys’ turnovers soon began to snowball into bad fouls and get Tech to the bonus quickly at the free-throw line.

With nearly seven minutes gone by in the second half, Mc-Neese had committed five fouls to just three made shots. However, Tech ran into multiple shooting spells of their own and needed to go to different lineup sets to settle in and build an 11-point lead with 12:30 left.

To the Cowboys’ credit, they stuck around and hit a flurry of five of six shots and held Tech without a field goal for four minutes to make it a 62-60 ballgame with 3:44 left.

But once again, it was Tech who proved to withstand the storm and would go on to outscore the Cowboys 9-2 over the remaining 3:44, including holding McNeese scoreless over the final 2:12.

Batcho, a Texas Tech transfer, led all scorers with 11 points in the second half on 5-of-7 shooting and through three games has averaged 13 points per game and 8 rebounds.

“We haven’t lost a game since he’s been here,” Henry said of Batcho with a smile postgame. “ Batcho’s just an amazing defensive presence. He kind of takes a load off on the guards. Sometimes we might be sloppy defensively and he’ll just come in and clean it up as you saw. I think he had four blocks which is insane. He’s just a pro. We love Batcho. Thank God for Batcho.”

With the win, Tech not only improved to 4-1 on the season but 3-0 at home and 16-1 all-time against the Cowboys at the Thomas Assembly Center. It’s the 10th time in the last 12 seasons the Bulldogs have started their season with at least four wins through five games.

And it all came on a night when the team shot a season-low 40.4% from the field and was outscored 28-18 in the paint.

But like he’s continued to believe, Hester said the Bulldogs proved they can be the tougher team and have the pieces to be a tough out for anyone going forward. With Batcho hitting a groove, and Henry and Chavez finding confidence after slow starts to their season, Hester said the Bulldogs have shown they can be for real and potentially make noise this season. But for as encouraging a week as it was, now it’s a matter of sustainability.

“I think it shows our growth. I don’t think we were this team at Colorado State. I think we’ve gotten better since then and our goal is to keep getting better every day,” Hester said. “I know the cliche to say, ‘1% better every day’, but I don’t know how many percent want to be better but we just want to grow every day and learn every day and get better every day. If we can be great in practice, these moments will come. I don’t want to make light of the games but practice is where you prepare for these moments.

“For Isaiah and Jaylin, our two leading scorers, to score seven points total and you see four other guys step up and score in double figures I think it shows the depth we could have,” he continued. “Now, we have to work on the word ‘consistency’ to where we can get that out of multiple guys every night and not guess where it’s going to come from. If we can do that, I think we can be a hard team to beat.”

Tech hosts Dillard on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Thomas Assembly Center. The game will be streamed on ESPN+.