SFA Heads to Waco for Tuesday Night Showdown at Baylor

Tuesday, December 18

Waco, Texas

7:35 p.m.

Stephen F. Austin

Baylor

SFA Heads to Waco for Tuesday Night Showdown at Baylor

12/17/2018 5:20:00 PM | Men's Basketball

'Jacks meet Bears for first time since 2015-16 season opener

By: Charlie Hurley | Director of Athletic Media Relations

THE OPENING TIP
• In its final non-conference road game of the 2018-19 campaign, the SFA men's basketball team heads west to Waco, Texas, for a Tuesday night showdown with Baylor at the Ferrell Center.
Tip-off between the 'Jacks and Bears is set for 7:30 p.m. and the Big 12/Southland tilt will be televised live on FOX Sports Southwest-Alternate. Additionally, the game will also be streamed online via the FOX Sports GO app.
• Rob Meyers will provide play-by-play and analysis of the SFA/Baylor game over the airwaves on Q107.7 FM in Nacogdoches. Meyers' call can also be heard around the globe on the TuneIn app.
• SFA is going in search of its first true road win of the season Tuesday night when it takes on Baylor. Since 2012-13, the 'Jacks have won at least nine road games in five of those six seasons.
• Senior guard Shannon Bogues continues to star for the 'Jacks through their non-conference slate. The Killeen, Texas, product leads the teams and ranks third in the Southland in scoring with an average of 16.8 points per game.
• Bogues also leads the team and is tops in the Southland in both three-point field goal percentage (.424) and minutes played per game (35:31). His 2.78 three-pointers per game is the second-highest average in the 13-team league.
• Bogues, Davonte Fitzgerald and Kevon Harris have accounted for 61.5-percent of the 'Jacks' point total through their nine games in 2018-19. Those three average 16.8, 12.7 and 13.0 points per game respectively and each member of that trio has posted at least 10 points in 21 of the 27 games played between the three.

LAST TIME OUT
• Senior Shannon Bogues turned in his first double-double effort in an SFA uniform, finishing with a team-high 18 points as well as a game and career-best 12 rebounds but the 'Jacks dropped a 74-58 decision at Louisiana-Monroe Saturday afternoon.
• Louisiana-Monroe started the game on a 23-5 run which proved to be too large of a deficit for SFA to overcome.
• Bogues drilled a three-pointer that pulled SFA within four, 50-46, with 11:15 left in the second half but the Warhawks answered with a 13-3 run to go up 63-49 with 7:37 left. SFA never cut Louisiana-Monroe's lead to fewer than 10 points from there.
• Kevon Harris added 17 points while Davonte Fitzgerald posted 16 points and nine rebounds for SFA in its second-straight setback to a Louisiana-based institution.
• Outside of Bogues, Fitzgerald and Harris, the remaining seven SFA players who saw the court combined to produce just seven points in the loss.

BITTEN BY THE BUG
• The injury bug has run rampant through the 'Jacks locker room and currently SFA is playing without a number of its key contributors.
• Through just nine games in 2018-19, the 'Jacks have seen five players miss a combined 33 games due to various injuries and maladies.
• Senior TJ Holyfield will miss the entire season with a shoulder injury while junior guard John Comeaux is listed as week-to-week. Aaron Augustin played in his first game on Tuesday, Dec. 20 after suffering an arm injury in a preseason scrimmage while Comeaux is on the mend from knee surgery last May. Augustin played in four consecutive games before being sidelined due to an illness before the Louisiana Tech game on Friday, Dec. 7. Jovan Grujic has missed the last four games while junior Samuli Nieminen has also sat out the previous six contests.
• Both Augustin and Holyfield were Southland Conference All-Defensive Team members last season. Additionally, the latter was a top-three scorer for SFA in 2017-18 while Augustin was one of two players on SFA's roster with 50 or more steals.

HEY…THANKS
• Though SFA and Baylor will be duking it out on the court Tuesday night, the 'Jacks do have the Bears to thank for helping SFA in a big way last Saturday.
• By defeating Arizona at the McKale Center, Baylor snapped the Wildcats' 52-game non-conference home winning streak and made Arizona's home court record since 2012-13 101-6.
• That means SFA once again possesses the nation's best home court winning percentage since the start of the 2012-13 season. The 'Jacks are 91-5 (.948) inside William R. Johnson Coliseum in that span while is slightly better than Arizona's .944 winning percentage in the McKale Center during that same time frame.

SFA vs. BIG 12
• Tuesday night's battle with the Bears marks SFA's 52nd meeting against a currently Big 12 program.
• SFA is 22-29 (.431) all-time against current members of the Big 12. Seven of those 22 wins have come against Baylor while five each have come against TCU and Texas Tech.
• Third-year head coach Kyle Keller is 0-1 against Big 12 programs in his tenure as the 'Jacks' bench boss.
• The 'Jacks' last showdown against a Big 12 program prior to Tuesday night came in the opening round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament when 14th-seeded SFA faced off against third-seeded Texas Tech.

SERIES HISTORY
• In a series that dates back to 1932, SFA is 7-8 all-time against the Bears which included a 2-4 record in Waco.
• The teams have met just six times since 1978 with five of those six matchups taking place in Waco. SFA's most recent win over Baylor came on Nov. 25, 2003, when the 'Jacks captured a 79-57 victory over the Bears at the Ferrell Center.
• In the most recent game between SFA and Baylor, the #21/22-ranked Bears posted a 97-55 victory over the 'Jacks on Nov. 13, 2015. The game was the 2015-16 season opener for both squads.

SCOUTING BAYLOR | ROSTER | SCHEDULE | STATISTICS
• Saturday in Tuscon, Ariz., Baylor out-rebounded Arizona 51-19 in order to come away with a 58-49 triumph over the Wildcats at the McKale Center. Makai Mason pumped in a game-high 22 points for the Bears who put an end to Arizona's 52-game non-conference home winning streak.
• Led by the likes of Tristan Clark and Mark Vital, the Bears have one of the best low post defenses in the country through the early stages of the season. Baylor ranks fifth in the nation in blocked shots per game (6.4) and Clark leads the charge there. His 2.67 rejections per game represent the 14th-highest average in the nation. Vital adds a blocked shots per game average of 1.11.
• It's Vital who leads the Bears in rebounding at a clip of 7.9 per game. That average is the fifth-best in the Big 12 and on the offensive glass he's grabbing 3.33 boards per game - the 38th-highest average in the country.
• Clark also leads the nation in field goal percentage through the Bears' first nine games. The sophomore is shooting 76.2-percent from the field.
• Mason (14.7 ppg) leads the Bears in scoring and is one of four Baylor players averaging at least 12 points per game. Also included on that list are Clark (13.0 ppg), Mario Kegler (12.3 ppg), and King McClure (12.1 ppg).
• McClure has been responsible for almost one-third of the Bears' three-point makes this season. Of Baylor's 60 long-range shots, McClure has knocked down 19 of them and as a team the Bears are connecting on 29.3-percent (60-of-205) of their tries from distance.
• Since the 2007-08 season, Baylor is an impressive 95-7 in non-conference home contests.

COMING UP NEXT
• A stretch of three-straight home games for the 'Jacks begins Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. when SFA welcomes Arlington Baptist to William R. Johnson Coliseum for a non-conference showdown. That game will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN+ and the ESPN app.

-SFA-