Moody held Troy to nine points in the first half, then thwarted off a late rally for a 52-48 victory on Friday night.
“It’s a big win,” said Bearcats coach Danny Stewart, whose team improved to 9-13 overall, 5-4 in 16-2A and a half-game back of Crawford, which played Bruceville-Eddy on Friday night. “Troy is leading the district and that’s what we expected of ourselves. It’s big for our confidence.”
Troy (16-11, 7-2), which defeated Moody 54-40 in the earlier meeting, remains in first after second-place McGregor lost to Hamilton.
“In the first half, we didn’t want to play and it was evident,” said Trojans coach David Brawner, whose team shot 27 percent from the field. “For some reason, we didn’t want to play offense. It was not the team that’s been playing the last four weeks. We weren’t aggressive.”
The Trojans made one of 25 shots and scored five points over a 15-minute span from the middle of the first quarter until the third before finally turning it on.
After trailing by as many as 12, Troy pulled to within 42-37 on Stephen Ford’s stepback 3-pointer with 2:15 left. He’d eventually add a free throw, but Moody’s Nate Wilburn hit four free throws and reserve Dylan Gonzales (11 points, nine rebounds) added a pair for a 48-38 lead.
Ford (18 points, all in second half) canned another 3 and hit a driving layup to make it 48-45 with 28 seconds to go. Moody’s Brown Williams answered with a pair of free throws with 23.3 seconds for a 50-45 lead. Then, Troy’s Zach Lynch (18 points) drilled a 3 from the corner with 16 seconds left, but the Bearcats broke the Trojans press and Gonzales scored inside with 6 seconds left to seal the win.
“They did a good job because we’ve fallen apart before (against Hico) but they came through this time,” said Stewart, whose team shot 19-for-58 from the field.
A starter earlier in the season, Gonzales provided a spark in the paint along with 6-8 Jordan Jones (10 points, 18 rebounds). Zach Harmon also scored six points and had eight rebounds.
Moody hopes to build on the win when it hosts McGregor at 8 p.m. Tuesday while Troy looks to rebound against Clifton.
“We fought in the second half,” said Brawner, whose team forced 27 turnovers. “We started taking the ball to the basket and started playing. The team in the second half was totally different from the team in the first half.”
When asked how much the Trojans can learn from Friday, Brawner responded: “I guess we’ll see tomorrow morning. It all starts in practice. We’ve never been in first place before and obviously we didn’t handle it well and maybe we don’t need to be in it for awhile.”
