HCU Huskies (8-18, 5-8 SLC) at Lamar Cardinals (8-18, 4-9 SLC)
Thursday, Feb. 16 – 7 p.m.
Montagne Center - Beaumont, Texas
TV (ESPN+)
Audio (Husky Sports Network/Garrett Jones)
Live Stats
Game Notes
BEAUMONT, Texas – With just five games left in the regular season, Southland Conference rivals HCU and Lamar are meeting for the first time on Thursday at the Montagne Center at 7:00 p.m. with a quick turnaround to face each other again on Saturday in Sharp Gym.
HCU (8-18, 5-8 SLC) is coming off an 84-78 win in San Antonio, Texas over UIW last Saturday that snapped a five-game losing skid. Senior
Maks Klanjscek had a monster week last week that included a career-high 30 points in a loss at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. In the win over UIW, he scored a game-high 25 points on 6-of-15 shooting while going a perfect 10-of-10 from the foul line.
As a team, the Huskies are among the best in the nation at getting to the free throw line. The team leads the Southland in both free throw attempts per game (22.4), ranking 20
th among all NCAA Division I teams, and free throws made per game (16.5), ranking 17
th.
Brycen Long is one of the top free throw shooters in the nation, ranking sixth with a 91 percent (91-of-100) make rate from the foul line. Freshman
Andrew King, meanwhile, checks in at 176
th nationally in free throw attempts, reaching the line 114 times this season and converting at 75.4 percent (86-of-114).
Lamar (8-18, 4-9 SLC) has split its last four games, alternating wins over McNeese and UIW and losses to Northwestern State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The last time out was a 61-52 loss at TAMUCC.
The Cardinals are led by freshman Nate Calmese who leads all league freshmen at 16.8 points per game, shooting 47.1 percent (164-of-348) from the floor and 35.8 percent (49-of-137) from three. Fellow freshman Yuto Yamanouchi-Williams is fourth in the conference with 7.4 rebounds per game.
Lamar briefly left the Southland for the WAC last season so the last time the two teams met was in 2021-22. In three meetings that season, the two teams split their two regular season games with the home team winning each and the Cardinals knocked the Huskies out of the SLC Conference Tournament in Katy, Texas.
The two teams will meet again on Saturday, Feb. 18, in Sharp Gym on the HCU campus at 7:00 p.m. That game will mark the fourth time this season the Huskies have played a team twice in an eight-day span.
