3-Point Barrage Leads Oral Roberts Past Texas State

A hot shooting night, including a 10-15 mark from 3-point range, led the Oral Roberts University men's basketball team past Texas State 82-65, Saturday afternoon at the Mabee Center.

ORU (2-1) was a combined 2-17 (.118) from 3-point range entering Saturday's contest before rattling off 10 treys. It was the most 3-pointers made since dropping 11 against St. Gregory's last season.

In addition to the 66 percent mark from the 3-point line, ORU finished the game at 60 percent (29-48) from the field for the game, the best mark since hitting 62.3 percent (33-53) against Nicholls State last season. Texas State (0-3) shot 51 percent (26-51) for the game. ORU also had an advantage in rebounds (27-24), and points off turnovers (17-4). Texas State finished with 14 turnovers to ORU's nine, including just two Golden Eagle giveaways in the second half.

Obi Emegano set a new career high with 27 points, including a 4-6 mark from 3-point range and shot 9-12 overall. The 27 points topped his previous career best of 25, scored against Eureka while he was at Western Illinois.

The majority of the offensive production came from the starters, as the starting five scored 78 of the team's 82 points for ORU. Shawn Glover scored 18, Korey Billbury added 14 and D.J. Jackson scored 11. Jorden Kaufman, who made just the second start of his career, added eight points on a perfect 4-for-4 shooting night.

Texas State was led by Emani Gant, who had 14 points. A trio of Bobcats, including Joel Wright, Phil Hawkins and Kavin Tilbury each chipped in nine points in the loss.

"The game is pretty easy when you make shots, that's the bottom line," said coach Scott Sutton. "Tonight, we were terrific shooting the basketball. I thought we showed a little bit more patience than we have the last couple of games and looked to get our teammates involved. Obi, Korey, D.J. and Shawn stepped up and made shots. We needed that, we've been struggling from the 3 all season and I knew we were a better shooting team than that."

Things were tight early, with neither team being able to grab a lead of more than two in nearly nine minutes of play.

After five ties in the early going, Glover hit his firs tthree of the season to put ORU up 13-10, and the Golden Eagles would not trail the rest of the game.

Glover's trey helped ORU put together a 13-2 ORU run to get some early separation at 21-12. Texas State answered right back with an 8-1 run to get back within two at 22-20 with three minutes to play.

ORU was able to hang on to the lead as Emegano scored the game's next six points to make it an eight point advantage, 28-20, and took a 30-24 lead into the locker room.

Texas State hit its second 3-pointer of the game midway through the second half, but it was in the middle of a 14-5 run by the Golden Eagles, giving them the largest lead of the game at 51-39 with 12:58 to play.

Although ORU couldn't get much additional space between the Bobcats, the lead only dipped below 10 points once the rest of the way as ORU won its home opener for the eighth time in the last 10 years.

Next up for ORU are trips to Saint Louis (Nov. 21) and Wisconsin (Nov. 23) as the USA part of the 2013 Cancun Challenge.