SAN ANTONIO – The Tiger men's basketball team upped its winning streak to nine games with an 80-59 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference victory over Centenary College on Friday night.

Trinity now stands 14-4 overall this season and also stands alone in second place in the conference standings with a 7-2 record. Centenary dropped to 12-5 overall and now trails the Tigers by a game in league play. Tonight's win gives Trinity a split in the regular season series as Centenary took a slim 69-65 win last month in Shreveport, La.

AJ Clark (San Antonio, Texas / Johnson) led four Tiger players in double figures with a game-high 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting. He also connected on 6-for-7 at the foul line, adding a team-best five assists, three rebounds, and a pair of steals.

Ben Hanley (Flower Mound, Texas / Flower Mound) and Tanner Brown (San Antonio, Texas / Brandeis) came off the bench with 10 points each, while Jacob Harvey (Huffman, Texas / Hargrave) sank three three-pointers on his way to an 11-point outing. Braxton Barry (Houston, Texas / Westbury Christian) picked up a game-best 11 rebounds to go with eight points, two steals, and two blocks on the night.

Trinity will be back on the court tomorrow night against the University of St. Thomas. The Celts are undefeated in the SCAC this season, including a home win over Trinity in December.

The Rundown
Trinity knocked down its first three shots of the game to take a quick 7-0 lead after two-plus minutes, including a dunk by Barry on the second possession of the night for the Tigers. The Gents missed their first seven shots in the game before finally getting on the board, but the Tigers answered back emphatically with an 8-0 spurt to run the lead out to 15-2 nearly seven minutes into the contest.

The lead remained at double figures most of the rest of the half, and Trinity took a low-scoring 29-18 advantage into the break. The Tigers shot over 57% from the field and held Centenary to just 25% shooting that included just 2-of-13 (15.4%) from three-point range.

Trinity missed its first several shots of the second half and Centenary nailed back-to-back three-pointers to draw within five points (24-29) less than 100 seconds into the period. Harvey had a pair of three-point buckets sandwiched around a dunk from Clark and soon the lead was back to double figures at 39-28 with just over 16 minutes remaining.

A quick six-point outburst by Centenary cut the lead back to five, though, with plenty of time left. Trinity put the game out of reach after that, scoring 20 of the next 25 points to take its first 20-point lead of the night with just over six minutes to go. Griffin Levine (Dallas, Texas / Yavneh) scored five straight points of his own at one point during the extended run, which began and ended with Barry connecting on layups.

The Gents got the lead back to 13 points a couple of minutes later, but the damage had been done, and the Tigers pushed the lead as high as 23 in the final moments of the game.

Coach Speak
"Fun game tonight," exclaimed Head Coach Jimmy Smith. "It was awesome having our students back in the crowd and I thought they were great! Our defense was phenomenal tonight! The guys played really hard."

Up Next
The Tigers will host St. Thomas tomorrow evening at 6:00 p.m., matching up the top two teams in the SCAC so far this season.