OKLAHOMA CITY -- Semar Farris dished out a career-best 13 assists, the most by a MACU player since joining the NAIA to lead the Mid-America Christian University Evangels to a 99-91 victory over the No. 17-ranked Oklahoma City University Stars Thursday night (Feb. 27) inside the Gaulke Activity Center.
With No. 20-ranked St. Gregory's University losing earlier tonight at No. 5-ranked Southwestern Assemblies of God University, the Evangels are now in a three-way tie for third place in the Sooner Athletic Conference with SGU and Wayland Baptist University with identical 11-8 conference records. OCU remains a game in front in second place at 12-7 in the league.
The Evangels (15-10, 11-8 SAC) led wire-to-wire and appeared to have things in hand when Farris capped a 15-4 spurt with a three that turned an eight-point lead into a 89-70 cushion with 2:41 left.
But R.J. McGhee and the Stars had other ideas as McGhee nailed four threes in a two-minute span, with the last cutting the Evangel lead to 92-86 with 50 seconds left.
However, unlike the first meeting at OCU (16-10, 12-7 SAC) that saw the Evangels blow a seven-point lead in the final minute because of missed free throws, tonight the Evangels made enough by hitting 7-of-10 at the charity stripe down the stretch to close out the win.
Even though the Evangels led the entire way, they had to fight off OCU throughout the hard-fought contest.
MACU took a 47-34 lead at the break and quickly built that to 18 on an offensive putback by Josh Minner that made it 57-39 at the 16:14 mark of the second half.
It was a 19-point lead when Terence Bonhomme helped the Stars get right back in it by scoring 10 points of a 20-7 spurt that trimmed the Evangels' lead to 69-63 with 7:55 remaining.
To go along with his 13 dimes, Farris also scored a game-high 28 points and had three steals. Jarius Wilson scored 19 points and Minner added 17. Angelo Lewis added 13 points and Reggie Davis chipped in with 11. Josh Smith had a team-high seven rebounds for the Evangels.
McGhee paced the Stars with 25 points and eight boards, followed by Terry Johnson's 22 points and seven rebounds. Bonhomme scored 15 and Terrence Walker added 10.
The Evangels out-rebounded the Stars 47-44 overall and 18-16 on the offensive glass.
Despite allowing the Stars to shoot 46.7 percent (35-of-75) overall from the field, the Evangels held OCU to only 25 percent (5-of-20) from beyond the arc.
The Evangels will try to head into the Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament on a high note by playing at Southwestern Christian University Saturday afternoon (Mar. 1) at 5 p.m. in Bethany, Okla.
