HOUSTON – Trae Jefferson scored a career high 28 points while Marvin Jones went perfect from the field (5-of-5) as the Texas Southern Tigers rolled past Alabama State 87-72 in the 2017 SWAC Tournament Quarterfinals held at the HPE Arena on Tuesday night.
“We learned a lot from the way that we finished last season,” said TSU head coach Mike Davis. “After winning the regular season championship we suffered a letdown with a loss to Southern going into the tournament. Our focus has been to keep the momentum we’ve built moving forward.”
Texas Southern had all of the momentum to open the second half of play as the Tigers hit some timely buckets to help put away an aggressive ASU team.
“I thought the way we started the second half was huge for us,” said Davis. “We didn’t play to the best of our ability in the first half. But this team has a lot of depth and a lot of guys that can score the basketball so we knew if we continued to take good shots and run our system things would get better.”
And get better they did as the Tigers outscored Alabama State 49-41 in the second half fueled largely in part behind the stellar play of SWAC Freshman of the Year Trae Jefferson.
“Trae has really elevated his play the last few games,” said TSU center Marvin Jones. “You can tell that he is starting to really get comfortable in our system.”
Texas Southern shot 46 percent from the field during the contest while forcing the Hornets into committing 12 turnovers which subsequently resulted in 18 Tigers points.
TSU now moves on to face Grambling State at the Toyota Center on Friday, March 10 at 2:30 p.m.
Courtesy: TSU Athletics
