UWA’s Downey earns 200th career win

LIVINGSTON – West Alabama men’s basketball defeated West Georgia 67-45 in Gulf South Conference action Friday to give head coach Mark Downey his 200th career victory at Pruitt Hall.

UWA improved to 13-8 overall and 10-5 in the GSC, ranked second, while Downey moved to 200-100 as a head coach. The Wolves fell to 15-9 and 7-8.

“I’ve been truly blessed to have great coaches and a lot of great players to be able to reach this mile stone,” Downey said.

“Tonight, we really struggled early. They tried to be really physical with us in the first half, so we told our guys they were going to need to grind this one out. We tried to stay positive at half time and we told the guys they were going to turn it around and they did. We weren’t fluent offensively but we did what we needed to do.”

The Tigers shot 15-of-26 (57.7 percent) from the field to lead the Wolves 44-26 in the second half. UWA led in rebounding 43-30 and in points in the paint 40-22.

Lleon Tillman led the scoring for the Tigers, posting 16 points and falling shy of his sixth double-double of the season with nine rebounds. Desmond Raymond followed with 12 points, while Jared Woolfolk ended with 10.

Jarell Byrd led the defense with five defensive boards while tallying seven of the team’s eight blocks. Byrd finished with eight total rebounds and six points.

Deonta Stocks led the Wolves with 13 points, despite shooting 2-for-10 from the field. Stocks was 9-of-10 from the free-throw line. Deontre Brown followed with 10 points.

West Alabama will take to the road on Sunday to face conference opponent, Shorter. Tipoff is set for 4 p.m. at the Winthrop-King Centre.

“Shorter played us well when we hosted them earlier in the year,” said Downey. “They’ve lost five in a row, so they will be hungry. Any road game will be tough for us, we will have to battle like we did tonight. We just want to keep winning one-by-one.”

The game can be heard on ESPN 104.9 and ESPN1049.com.