Behind the duo of Brandon Miller and Mark Sears, No. 4 Alabama pushed its winning streak to four games with a 91-88 win over Memphis on Tuesday night in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Miller finished with a team-high 24 points and added eight rebounds and five assists. Sears had a team-high 12 points in the first half and finished with 18. Noah Clowney put up 11 points, nine rebounds and a team-high three blocks for the Crimson Tide (9-1).
Memphis leading scorer Kendric Davis had a game-high 30 points and five assists. DeAndre Williams added 15 points and nine boards but fouled out with 6:18 to go. A 9-2 Memphis run, sparked by Williams and Davis, tied the game at 57 with 9:56 left, but Alabama scored the next seven points.
The Tigers (8-3) trimmed Alabama’s lead to 75-70 with 3:03 to play. But back-to-back buckets by Miller, a 3-pointer and a dunk, gave the Crimson Tide an 82-73 advantage with 1:12 to go, enough cushion to hold off a late Memphis surge.
No. 5 Houston 74, North Carolina A&T 46
Ja’Vier Francis established career highs of 17 points and 15 rebounds, and the Cougars bounced back from their first loss of the season to steamroll the visiting Aggies in nonconference play.
Marcus Sasser also scored 17 points for Houston (10-1), which played for the first time since losing the No. 1 ranking Saturday with a 71-65 home loss against No. 8 Alabama. Emanuel Sharp added 10 points for the Cougars, who held a team under 50 points for the seventh time this season.
Kam Woods scored a season-best 26 points for the Aggies (4-5), who had a three-game winning streak halted. Demetric Horton added 11 points for North Carolina A&T, which trailed by 15 at the break and 34 at one point in the second half.
No. 9 Arizona 99, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 61
Azuolas Tubelis had 20 points and 13 rebounds as the Wildcats played without starting point guard Kerr Kriisa for most of the game due to illness in a victory over the Islanders in Tucson, Ariz.
Tubelis, a junior, posted his fourth consecutive game with at least 20 points and became the 53rd player in school history to score 1,000. He also had four assists and three steals for the Wildcats (9-1), who won their 24th consecutive game at McKale Center.
Simeon Fryer scored 12 points to lead the Islanders (5-5), who were outrebounded by 20 and didn’t have the size to contain Tubelis and Arizona’s other post players. Oumar Ballo had 13 points and eight rebounds for the Wildcats. A third big man, freshman Henri Veesaar, scored a career-high 16 points.
–Field Level Media
