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Tulsa
Rice
Tulsa Takes Down Rice to Close Out Regular Season
3/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 7, 2009
Final Stats |
Final Stats 
HOUSTON - Jerome Jordan scored 13 of his 15 points in the second half as the Tulsa Golden Hurricane overcame a one-point halftime deficit for a 60-50 win over the Rice Owls.
Tulsa heads into next week's Conference USA tournament with a 22-9 overall record and 12-4 league mark, while Rice fell to 9-21 and 4-12. The win gives Tulsa a 7-5 road record, the most since the 2001-02 campaign.
Ben Uzoh added 11 points and Ray Reese 10 for the Hurricane in the low scoring contest. Cory Pflieger led Rice with 10 points.
It was a game that featured the league's top three-point shooting team, Rice, and the league's top team defending the trey, Tulsa. The Hurricane won that battle. The Owls came into the contest shooting 40-percent from three-point range, and was held to 17-percent. Tulsa's percentage from beyond the arc wasn't much better at 18-percent, but the Hurricane knocked down an overall 44-percent of its shots.
Tulsa held its 14th opponent to under 60 points and the eight opponent to 50 points or less. It was also the 28th time in 31 games this year that the opposition shot under 50-percent from the field.
The first-half saw the game tied eight times, and Tulsa took its first lead at 9-8 with 13:21 left in the first half. Tulsa led by as many as five points in the first half, while Rice's biggest lead was three points twice when Emerson Herndon hit a jumper at the 4:36 mark to put the Owls ahead 20-17, and then again at the 2:31 mark on a Trey Stanton jumper to make it 22-19. Tulsa took a one-point lead at 24-23, before Rice got a Herndon tip-in as time was expiring for the one-point, 25-24, halftime lead.
Tulsa jumped out to a 32-25 lead in the second half with an 8-0 run on two baskets by Uzoh and one each from Bishop Wheatley and Justin Hurtt, before the Owls scored its first points 4:08 into the half. Rice cut Tulsa's lead to two points, 41-39, at the 9:33 mark. The Hurricane moved its lead to double-digits for the first time with a 10-point lead, 55-45, with just over three minutes remaining. The Hurricane kept its' distance from the Owls, maintaining its lead from seven to 10 points for the remaining three minutes.
During that time span, Jordan scored 10 straight points to increase Tulsa's lead from 45-41 to 55-45 at the 2:51 mark.
Tulsa is the No. 2 seed in the Conference USA Tournament and will play the 12 noon quarterfinal game on Thursday afternoon. The tournament will be announced later tonight.
