SHAWNEE - Jaquan Simms scored 31 points including eight 3-pointers as the Oklahoma Baptist men's basketball team improved to 6-0 at the Noble Complex as they rolled the Harding Bisons by the score of 95-67 on Thursday evening.
The Bison shot 31 of 63 (49%) form the field including a red hot 16 of 37 (43%) from behind the arc and 17 of 21 (81%) at the free throw line. The Bison put together another solid defensive performance as they held Harding to 26 of 66 (39%) from the field, 7 of 21 (33%) from behind the arc, and 8 of 15 (53%) from the free throw line.
OBU turned it over 11 times and had 20 assists on their 31 made buckets. The Bison outrebounded Harding 44-35 and got 39 points from their bench.
Harding jumped ahead early on with seven straight points from Joel Polius to take a 7-2 lead, but OBU got a pair of jumpers from
Jarius Hicklen as well as free throws from
Kurt Hall to even the game at eight going into the first media timeouts. From there, Simms would heat up, scoring 13 points in the next four minutes including four 3-pointers and an incredible four point play to spark an 11-2 run for a 28-17 lead at the under 12 timeout.
There was no cooling down for Simms as he continued to attack with help from
Mohammed Abubakar and
Brantly Thompson to push the lead out to 16 with under 8 to play in the half. OBU maintained that lead for most of the half as Simms put an exclamations point on his big half with a deep range 28 foot 3-pointers at the buzzer to give OBU a 49-34 lead at the break after scoring 23 first half points to go with six 3-pointers.
Simms opened the second half with a 3-pointer and the Bison were off and rolling with an 18 point lead. The lead would blossom to 22 points after a 3-pointer from
Harrison Stoddart and a three point play from
Dishon Lowery. OBU kept the pedal to the metal as Hall got involved while Hicklen knocked down a deep ball and Simms added a jumper and an eighth 3-pointer to get the lead out to 27.
The closest the Bisons could get to OBU in the second half was 20 points as OBU cruised the rest of the way, beginning to empty their bench around the five minutes mark. A total of 12 Bison would score out of the 13 that played as the Bison cruised to a 95-67 in front of over 700 fans on Thursday evening.
Simms was 10 of 15 from the field and 8 of 12 from deep to go with four rebounds and four assists while Thompson was the only other Bison in double figures with 10 points, five boards, and four assists. Hicklen and Abubakar each scored nine off the bench with Hicklen adding three assists and two steals and Abubakar adding four rebounds and two blocks. Stoddart scored eight to go with five boards while Hall had eight to go with four rebounds.
Sayvon Milton scored six points off the bench on a pair of 3-pointers.
Polius was the only double digit scorer for Harding with 20 points and eight rebounds while Gabriel Divic scored nine points off the bench for the Bisons.
OBU moves to 9-4 overall and 4-3 in the GAC and will look to sweep the weekend on Saturday afternoon as they welcome in the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys with tip-off set for 3 p.m. from the Noble Complex.
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