GEORGETOWN, Texas – The Tiger men's basketball team picked up an 87-75 road victory in its Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference opener at Southwestern University on Friday night.

Trinity remains undefeated with a 6-0 record overall, while the Pirates drop to 0-8 to start the 2023-24 season. Since 1991-92, Trinity improves to 49-20 in the series against Southwestern – including a streak of five consecutive wins. The Tigers scored 32 fastbreak points on the night and had 21 points off of turnovers to fuel the victory. Trinity held a 40-34 lead at halftime, but held a double-digit advantage for most of the second half of play.

Trinity was led by another double-double from Christian Green (San Antonio, Texas / Veterans Memorial), who finished with a game-high 24 points to go along with 12 rebounds. Green hit 9-of-15 from the field in the game, adding two assists, two blocks, and two steals to his stat line.

Tanner Brown (San Antonio, Texas / Brandeis) connected on 4-of-9 three-point field goals on his way to an 18-point night for the Tigers. Brown also recorded a couple of steals and dished out a team-leading five assists. Jacob Harvey (Huffman, Texas / Hargrave) was Trinity's only other player to reach double figures in scoring, finishing with 10 points to go with three assists and two steals. Braxton Barry (Houston, Texas / Westbury Christian) had three steals and seven boards, while Grayson Herr (Farmington, Conn. / Farmington) and Zach Fenn (Covington, La. / Saint Paul's) came off the bench with eight points each on Friday.

Trinity continues the opening SCAC weekend of the season tomorrow night at Texas Lutheran University, then will not play again until December 15 and 16 as the Tigers will play their first home games in SCAC play.

The Rundown
Southwestern got the first two baskets of the game and held the lead through the early moments of the first period. A three-pointer from Jacob Millhouse (Plano, Texas / Independence) started a string of four straight Trinity buckets, though, and the Tigers took an 11-6 lead with just over four minutes gone by in the game. The lead reached double digits as Herr went coast-to-coast for a fastbreak layup to give Trinity a 22-12 advantage at the midway point of the period.

After a 9-1 scoring run that last almost exactly three minutes, the Pirates had cut it to a one-possession game with plenty of time still left in the first half. The rally continued and eventually the game was back to even at 29-29 with 3:31 remaining. That's when Green came through with a layup and his only three-pointer of the night to push it back to a five-point game. The teams traded threes in the final minute and Harvey's made it a 40-34 game at the break.

Less than a minute into the second half, Trinity had the lead out to 13 points (47-34) on the strength of back-to-back triples from Brown. That margin went as high as 16 points before Southwestern was able to make any kind of run to keep it from being a blowout. It was another 9-1 run by the Pirates that cut the lead to just eight (56-48) with just over 13 minutes left. Just a few minutes later, Southwestern had a three-pointer to make it a 61-54 game, but that was as close as it got the rest of the way. Fenn, Brown, and Green all responded with layups for the Tigers and the lead was back up to 13 points less than two minutes later.

Following the under-eight media timeout and a Southwestern basket to make it a 67-58 game, Green fueled an 8-0 run by the Tigers by scoring seven of his 24 points over a two-minute window that effectively sealed the win. The Pirates managed to get the lead to single digits with just over a minute left, but their last push came too late. Herr put the finishing touches on the game with his three-pointer with less than a minute to play.

Coach Speak
"Always tough to win on the road so we are excited to come away with a victory tonight," said Head Coach Jimmy Smith. "We strive to hold opponents under 40% shooting and we were able to get that done tonight. Southwestern is a good rebounding team and they got the better of us in that area today. I would like to see us rebound the ball better tomorrow in another tough road game at TLU!"

Up Next
Trinity will finish off the weekend of play at Texas Lutheran University on Saturday afternoon, tipping off at 4:00 p.m.