Box score

HOUSTON—NJIT again displayed its emerging game-closing ability, dominating the final minutes of a difficult 72-66 Great West Conference men's basketball victory at Houston Baptist.

 

With sophomore Chris Flores scoring a career-high 28 points to lead the way, NJIT won its school Division I-best fifth game in a row.

The Highlanders, 10-2 in their last dozen games, are now 12-12 on the season and 6-1 in the Great West Conference. The win allowed the Highlanders to keep pace with GWC-leading Utah Valley, which went to 8-1 in conference play by topping defending champ South Dakota, 94-79, also on Thursday night.

 

In Houston, NJIT trailed by five points, 63-58, after Houston Baptist's Preseason GWC Player of the Year Andrew Gonzalez hit two free throws with 3:35 left.

 

But the high-scoring Gonzalez, who would finish with a game-high 29 points, only had one more marker in him for the night and the Highlanders closed the game on a 14-3 spurt over the final 3:14.

 

Eight of the points in the game-winning run came from Flores, whose 28 points tied the program's Division I record which was first set all of five days earlier by Jheryl Wilson in a home win over South Dakota.

 

Aside from the individual scoring exploits, that game vs. USD also featured a late game run to victory for NJIT. In beating South Dakota (76-68), the Highlanders trailed by a point with 1:43 left and then finished by scoring 9 unanswered points.

 

Two games earlier, NJIT won a non-conference game from Longwood, 65-64, on Isaiah Wilkerson's layup with 1.2 seconds left. And before that the Highlanders won at FDU in overtime.

 

Indeed, the string of strong finishes began at Chicago State on January 22. Before that, NJIT hadn't won a road game since December 2009. But the 13-month away winning drought ended when the Highlanders scored the game's last 7 points to pull out an 86-83 road win.

 

The dramatic win in Chicago began a stretch that has seen NJIT go 7-1, including the five late, close wins. NJIT is 3-1 on the road in the same span.

 

In addition to Flores' 28 points and team-leading 8 rebounds, the Highlanders got 16 points and 7 rebounds from Isaiah Wilkerson, whose on-court leadership regularly comes to the fore when the heat rises late in games.

 

Houston Baptist, 3-22 overall and 2-7 in the Great West, had one double-figure scorer aside from Gonzalez, as Junior Terry Bembry came off the bench 10 points. Gonzalez, who got 13 of his points at the foul line, where he shot 13-for-16, also led HBU with 8 rebounds.

 

The Huskies, who lost at NJIT, 96-84, in the teams' first meeting on January 15, was determined to avoid a repeat in the rematch, jumping to an 11-4 lead after a pair of Gonzalez foul shots 4:07 into the contest.

 

HBU still led comfortably, 20-11, after Shawn Echols' 3-pointer with 11:30 left in the first half and the Huskies stayed on top until NJIT used an 11-0 run in 2:49 that turned a 6-point hole into a 5-point lead, capped by two Flores free throws that made it 36-31 for the Highlanders with 1:10 left in the half.

 

NJIT still led by four in the final seconds, but Gonzalez was awarded three free throws on a 3-point try and he made two, leaving the Highlanders with a 37-35 halftime lead. Gonzalez had 13 points at the break for HBU, while Flores had 12 for NJIT.

 

The second half was tight, with six ties. And before NJIT's final separation, the biggest lead of the half for either team was HBU's five-point bulge that immediately preceded the Highlanders' winning push.

 

Gonzalez hit the two free throws to give the Huskies a 63-58 lead with 3:35 left.

 

Up to that point, NJIT, which was 6-for-10 at the foul line in the first half, had struggled at the line in the second half, going 6-for-12 there in the 16:46 after halftime.

 

But down five, freshman Lamar Kearse hit two free throws for the Highlanders with 3:14 left, beginning a finishing spurt of 9-for-11 from the stripe.

 

After Kearse trimmed the deficit to three, Wilkerson stole the ball in the backcourt and Flores tied the score on a three at the other end.

 

After an NJIT timeout at 2:44, Gonzalez committed his eighth turnover of the night at 2:20 and PJ Miller put the Highlanders on top to stay with a jump shot that made the score 65-63 with 2:07 left.

 

Gonzalez made the second of two foul shots to close the lead to a single point, but Flores, fouled at 1:47, sank both free throws and later Miller hit a pair of foul shots with 48 seconds left, making it a two-possession lead for NJIT, 69-64.

 

Flores then hit 3-of-4 foul shots in 24 seconds, putting the game farther beyond the reach of HBU, which had three turnovers and three missed shots in its possessions that immediately followed its five-point lead.

 

Thursday's win in Houston was the first in the state of Texas for NJIT as a Division I program. The Highlanders, who had lost the previous two years at Houston Baptist, will try to break another such streak on Saturday, when they visit Texas-Pan American. NJIT has won two of its last three games in its series with UTPA, but both wins have been in Newark.

 

The Broncs, who began playing NJIT in 2006-07, when the Highlanders began Division I competition, are 4-0 against the Highlanders in Edinburg, a few miles from the Mexican border.

 

Texas-Pan Am will have the added advantage on Saturday of a week's preparation before hosting NJIT. UTPA, which last played on February 12, did not have a Great West Conference game scheduled on Thursday in tandem with the Saturday visit from the Highlanders.

 

NJIT will visit Texas-Pan American on Saturday with tip scheduled for 7:30 pm (CST).