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Dawkins — staring through a nicked right eye he received 34 game-time seconds earlier after pin-balling between a pair of Carl Albert College defenders before hitting the deck for three minutes while trainers and his mother addressed a pinched nerve in his neck — let a jumper fly as time melted into the shill of the buzzer. The shot had a chance to erase what had been an ugly night for the Matadors, but it fell true to the evening's field-goal odds, clanging once off the iron before falling harmlessly to the hardwood, wrapping Carl Albert's 85-84 win in cardinal-and-gold heartbreak. "I thought I had it, but the ball turned on me so I guess it was just that night," Dawkins said of the miss that sealed the Vikings' first win since Thanksgiving weekend, while simultaneously ending the Matadors' three-game win streak. "You can't think about it too long because you've got a game tomorrow. That's the good thing about a tournament. You lose then you've got to come back and play hard to show you're not a loser. ... to show that you are a winner."
The Matadors (11-2) went a full six-minute stretch without recording a field goal midway into the first half. They would finish the half shooting just 26 percent from the floor, while sinking just 6-of-34 3-point attempts on the evening. "We couldn't stop them and they spread the floor on us, they made threes and we couldn't stop the big guy," Green said, noting Vikings forward Anthony Brown's 29-point performance. "We missed open shots and we make one of them and we win the game. There's 28 misses right there. ... the ball's got to go in the basket to score points." Dawkins' buzzer-beater might be the indelible image from an otherwise forgettable performance, but others missed opportunities to turn the tide as well. Fellow guard Corderro Bennett had given AWC its first lead since the second minute of the game with a 3-pointer with 5:17 left in regulation and sunk a pair of free throws with 36.2 seconds left in overtime to put the Matadors back in an 84-83 driver's seat. But after making a dramatic steal on the following Carl Albert possession and drawing a foul, Bennett bricked a pair of free throws with just over 12 seconds left in overtime. The one-point sliver of a lead disappeared eight seconds later when Vikings freshman Keyshore Williams canned a swirling layup. The loss will likely affect AWC's fifth-ranked status, but luckily for the Matadors it came at the hands of an out-of-conference opponent from the highly-competitive Region II, a conference that produced last year's national champion. The Matadors will hope to regain their shooting touch tonight when they close out the Wells Fargo Classic Basketball Tournament against No. 8 Odessa College, a team that was also unable to shake off the holiday rust Friday and was upset 58-50 by Phoenix College in the undercard. Mark Saxon can be reached at msaxon@yumasun.com ro 539-6882.  |
Matadors fall in overtime
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