Army Men’s Hoops Rolls to their First Road Win

SAN ANTONIO, TX – The Army West Point men’s basketball team (3-9, 0-0 PL) picked up its first road win of the year in an impressive 63-53 win over UTSA (5-7, 0-0 AAC).

“I’m really proud of the guys,” Lee Anderson Head Coach Kevin Kuwik said. “We’re going from competing to winning, we climbed the last part of the mountain. Every guy out there on the court tonight fought hard, they were locked in and they fought their butts off.”

Josh Scovens followed up his Patriot League Player/Rookie of the Week performance with another great game, scoring 25 points on 50% shooting and bringing in five boards. Ryan Curry also impressed with 14 points, four assists, two steals, and one board.

For the first time in his career, Abe Johnson had a double-double to go with a career-high four blocks.

The Black Knights opened the game by jumping out to a 5-0 lead but the Roadrunners would respond with an 8-0 run of their own to take an 8-5 lead. Scovens then went on a personal 5-0 run to regain the lead. After a UTSA layup, he scored two more at the line to make it seven straight points for the star freshman.

UTSA took a one point lead with 5:26 left in the first half and after a free throw from Curry tied the game up the Roadrunners would never see the lead again. Curry scored the final four Army points of the first half and the Black Knights went into the locker room up five.
The Army defense held UTSA to 3-13 shooting from deep in the first half.

Despite going cold on offense for the majority of the second half, the Black Knights defense was able to keep the Roadrunners in check and the Army lead never got lower than four.
The Roadrunners went two separate stretches of 3+ minutes without making a field goal in the second half and it allowed the Army lead to balloon to double digits.

With 47 seconds left the Roadrunners cut the Army lead to six. Josh Scovens went to the line and knocked down two free throws, then Johnson had the dagger with an emphatic slam to put the Black Knights back up 10 with a mere 23 seconds left.

The Army defense was incredible, holding an offense that came into the game averaging 78.8 points per game while shooting 35% from deep and held them to 53 points and 16.7% shooting from deep.

The Black Knights now head into the holiday break and will be off until they face Merchant Marine on December 30 for their final non-conference game of the year.