Overpowered. Outplayed. Outmatched. TSU routes Southern

After an improved display of basketball by the revived Southern men’s basketball team on Thursday night against Prairie View A&M (77-73) and the disapproving brawl the game beforehand, it became overshadowed by their loss against Texas Southern.
With Texas Southern clinching the regular season title in their blowout performance against Alcorn State winning 94-73, Texas Southern did not become subtle towards the Jaguars.
Instead they marked their claim by lighting up the scoreboard with their 88-78 victory at the H&PE Arena.
The results of such a game was the most points that Southern has allowed all year in conference play. Southern defensive play has been extreme due to not allowing other conference teams to score less than 58 points per game.
Southern head coach, Roman Banks while coaching a young team inferred that his team matched the Texas Southern intensity.
“I thought around the horn we did well enough physically to match their intensity tonight. We have to grow up overnight, We’ve got to get better inside physical play against these top teams in our conference,” said Banks.
Texas Southern had a tremendous performance with 59.2 percent made shots as they led by Deverlle Biggs which scored an abysmal amount of 27 points and Madison Gibbs added a double digit points of 15.
Southern (16-16, 13-5) at the near end of the season finished the regular season as the No.3 seed in the conference and will be a bid in the conference tournament at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas on Tuesday.
Southern will be introduced to Alabama A&M in the conference matchup at 2:30p.m. Thursday. Their last encounter with Alabama A&M at home ended with a nine point win of 72-63.
Southern were led by junior guard, Adrian Rodgers, who scored 22 points and sophomore guard, Trelun Banks came behind with 17 points.
“They outworked us tonight,” said Rodgers, “They had more energy and fight. They were just the better team tonight.”
Texas Southern (19-12, 16-2) cascaded Southern at halftime leading 51-44 and was outscored in the paint 36-26.
“They can score pretty well,” said Banks,” I think they were zoned in pretty well and they had a lot of second chances to get shots when they did miss.”
Southern sank shots in the first half with 56.1 percent while TSU shot 62.1 percent.
Southern in the long run hope to have another run-in with Texas Southern in the conference tournament soon to approach.
“I don’t know if we can look that far ahead,” said Banks, “We will just concentrate on that one game.”
Rodgers said to attribute to conference play, “At this point, it’s win or go home. We will use the couple of days to regroup and then continue to get back on the basics. We will work on the mistakes and we will be ready.”
As ready as former champions will ever be ascending through the ranks to attribute a title that hasn’t been breached since the 2012-2013 season.