ENMU's fearsome foursome falls short to Commerce

PORTALES — It wasn’t four against the world, but it sure seemed like it for the Eastern New Mexico men’s basketball team on Saturday.

Flying fists. The Greyhound bench cleared. Ejections galore.

They all happened less than nine minutes into the first half of Saturday’s Lone Star Conference game between ENMU and Division II’s 20th-ranked Texas A&M-Commerce team at Greyhound Arena. Eastern — already injury-riddled and down to eight available players — had four ejected, leaving only guards Nick Brown, Mangistu Jongkor, Devin Pullum and Isaiah Murphy with no substitutes to battle a full five-man Commerce lineup which did have the benefit of reserves.

So for the remaining 31 minutes and change, it was a-tired-four-on-five. A&M-Commerce, though down 12 at the time of the fight, not surprisingly rallied to forge a halftime tie and eventually a 112-99 victory.

In an absolutely bonkers sports weekend worldwide, a weekend in which both NFL conference championship games went to overtime, the Rockets came back to beat the Lakers in OT, the Thunder nipped the Sixers on a four-point play, Michigan’s second-ranked D-1 men’s basketball team lost to Wisconsin, and Federer was ousted by a 20-year-old Greek in Australia, Eastern’s game might have topped all of the above on the bonkers meter.

Four-on-five!

“Obviously, man, that’s kind of a hero’s moment,” ENMU head coach Tres Segler said. “My guys really showed a lot of character and didn’t quit. ... So I’m crazy proud of them. We just tried to do the best we could.”

“I told Tres and his guys that it was awesome (for them) to continue to compete and play and not get frustrated with the fact that they had four players,” Texas A&M-Commerce head coach Jaret von Rosenberg said.

The shame of it from the Greyhounds’ perspective was their lost opportunity. They were coming off a dramatic comeback win over Tarleton State two nights on Thursday and were beating the nation’s 20th-ranked team 24-12 in the early going Saturday.

Then came the fireworks that blew it all up.

With 11:57 left in the first half, things became testy between Texas A&M-Commerce’s Tyree Robinson and the Hounds’ Deng Kuany.

Here’s how it looked from Segler’s vantage point:

“Their forward (Robinson), from what I saw, threw a punch,” Segler said. “My player (Kuany) kind of protected himself and retaliated. When that happened, I made a bee line to go separate the kids. And both teams were trying to separate them. My kid, because he got hit, was kind of dazed and backing up. The other kid was aggressively continuing to come at him. He had several bursts where he tried to go back at somebody to continue the altercation. So at that point, he knocked the ref over in the process. And I guess what they’re saying is that our bench came on the court at some kind of level, and when they did that, that means they were ejected from the game.”

Per NCAA rules, those Greyhounds were ejected, though they did not join the altercation.

“My problem with the whole situation is, there’s no way that everyone on their bench stayed on their bench,” Segler continued. “And so I’m a little bit disappointed in that part of it. ... I just wish there was another outcome. Whether there had been a review process or they could have, I don’t know. I’m speechless.”

“It’s unfortunate, it’s unfortunate. We were definitely at fault for not composing ourselves in that little skirmish,” von Rosenberg said. “We just happened to stay on the bench and they didn’t. It could’ve easily been reversed.”

von Rosenberg was OK with Commerce’s victory, though not thrilled with how it came about.

“It’s awful,” he said. “Tres is a friend of mine. ... At the end of the day, we’ve got to win the game. But it’s not fun, it’s (lousy).”

And a bizarre situation for both coaches.

“I saw it on ESPN one time with Alabama,” von Rosenberg said, “but no, I haven’t been part of that (before).”

“I think maybe (I saw it in) high school, a tournament scenario,” Segler said. “A lot of times if something like that happened, I’ve seen teams call the game. Never in a college basketball game, never in a high-level college basketball game.”

When it happened Saturday, the four remaining Greyhounds were in a weird spot.

“We were just trying to have fun,” Pullum said.

“Oh man, it’s a rush,” Brown said. “It was exciting at first because we knew we had the lead, so we just did whatever we possibly could.”

“I’ve never been in a situation like that,” Jongkor said.

“Man, we had to figure stuff out,” Murphy said, “because only playing with four people, we were going to have to make something happen.”

The Eastern fans helped, loudly backing their depleted team, and the Greyhound quartet fed off that. Not long after play resumed, Pullum stretched the Hounds’ lead to 26-12 on a pair of technical free throws, soon followed by a Jongkor three to make it 29-12.

Commerce scored the next five points, but Murphy canned a trey to give Eastern a 32-17 lead. And after the Lions’ ensuing possession was ended with a Jongkor steal, the Eastern possession he created was finished with a Pullum layup, making it a 17-point game once again.

A bit later, Eastern went up by 18 points (39-21). And after Commerce sliced it to 39-24, Jongkor kept a Greyhound possession alive with an offensive rebound on the other end. He then fed Brown, who buried a trey to make it an 18-point difference yet again.

But the human body is what it is, regardless of how young and athletic the person using it happens to be. And so the eight Greyhound legs on the court were growing more and more rubbery. Fatigue had been long setting in.

“Immediately,” Pullum said of his own fatigue kicking in, “because I didn’t sub out of the game, even when we had our whole team.”

Brown started to feel it just a bit later. “Probably the first couple of possessions after everything happened,” he said. “We were going up and down, and that’s when I started to get winded.”

“I think like five minutes (after the ejections), even though we had the lead,” Jongkor said. “I was like, ‘I’m winded right now.’ Then I had my second wind and I was like, ‘This is big.’”

“Once they started pressing and they were picking up, picking up, we had to push the ball a little faster,” Murphy said. “That’s when we knew the fatigue would hit us.”

And the inevitable started to happen. With an 18-4 run, Commerce whittled its deficit to just four. A Brown lay-in put Eastern up 48-42, but the Lions then scored five in a row to make it a one-point game.

A Murphy free throw gave ENMU a two-point edge before Commerce senior guard Reggie Reid scored to give his team a 49-48 advantage.

Commerce was up 53-51 in the half’s closing seconds when Murphy laid one in to make it 53-all by intermission.

Pullum began the second-half scoring with a pull-up trey that put Eastern ahead 56-53. Biology, though, kept settling in and TAMC surged ahead 57-56.

A Jongkor foul shot tied it at 57 before Commerce’s Willie Rooks buried a left-corner three to lift his team back into the lead. The Greyhounds were never ahead or tied again, and though they kept it close for a little while, they faced a double-digit hole (76-66) within the first 10 minutes of the second half. Before long it was 80-67, and the Lions stayed in control, leading by as many as 19 points.

“Fatigue got the best of us,” Segler said. “They made a couple of easy threes because we couldn’t rotate and made them shoot or miss, but I thought we did pretty well all things considered.”

“There were some things that we just couldn’t account for. They were moving the ball so much,” Brown said. “We did the best we could just trying to contain them.”

Pullum finished with 39 points to go with seven rebounds, five assists and a steal. Brown added 21 points and six rebounds. Murphy had 14 points, four rebounds and three blocks. Jongkor chipped in with nine points, along with 10 boards and six assists.

Though the Greyhounds missed out on taking down a top-20 team, they planned to use the game as kindling, hoping it would stoke the fire inside them and help them burn a path to the LSC tournament.

“This is definitely a motivation for us,” Murphy said. “We’re going to come back and work hard, and when we go back to Commerce we’re going to give it everything we’ve got.”

“When we come out on the court every time, it’s war,” Brown said. “And when we go back to Commerce, they’re going to have to deal with all our team. Because if we had everybody (Saturday), we would’ve beaten them by 50.”

The rematch is Feb. 21.