ORU hands Jacks first conference loss

Saturday, December 6

Frost Arena

7:30 p.m.

South Dakota State University

Oral Roberts

12/6/2008 1:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball

By: SDSU Sports Info

South Dakota State never lead in its second Summit League game of the season on Saturday night against Oral Roberts, but they hung around all night before eventually falling by the score of 85-76 in front of a season-high crowd of 3,071 at Frost Arena.

The loss drops the Jackrabbits to 4-5 overall and 1-1 in Summit League play, while the Golden Eagles improve to 2-5 and 1-1 in league play.

Garrett Callahan led four Jackrabbits in double figures with 18 points, Clint Sargent scored 16. Josh Cassaday added a career-high 14 points and Mackenzie Casey a season-high 12 in the loss.

Defending Summit League Player of the Week Robert Jarvis scored a game-high 23 points to lead five ORU players in double figures. Andre Hardy finished with 16, Kyron Stokes 12 while Marcus Lewis and Beloved Rogers both finished with 11 points.

ORU's Robert Jarvis scored ten points in the first ten minutes of the first half, but the Jacks kept pace and trailed by just one point at 21-20 as 6:45 left in the first half.

The Golden Eagles scored the next six points to go up 29-22 and pushed the lead to as many as 11 points before a Mark Engen jumper found its mark with seconds to go in the half to send the Jacks to the lockerroom down nine points at 41-32.

ORU got those two points back to start the second half and boosted its lead to as many as 17 points in the second half before the Jacks started chipping away to the eventual final nine-point deficit.

Both teams shot well from the floor, but went 57.4 percent (31-of-54) from the floor compared to 52.5 percent (35-of-61) for the Jacks. The big edge came from beyond the arc, where ORU shot an even 40 percent (8-of-20) compared to 22 percent (4-of-18) by SDSU.

The Jackrabbits take a break from Summit League action when they return to action on Wednesday at Minnesota. Tip-off from historic Williams Arena is at 8 p.m. in a game that can be seen live on the Big-Ten Network.