By winning four straight, Louisiana's Ragin' Cajuns have squeezed their way into second place in the Sun Belt Conference West division, sitting one game behind the Arkansas-Little Rock Trojans, whom they will welcome to the Cajundome Thursday.
Thanks in part to Elfrid Payton's late-game heroics, UL (14-11, 8-3) continued to roll last Thursday with a 72-71 home win over the Denver Pioneers. Payton collected 20 points, but his biggest two came with .4 seconds left in the game.
Denver missed several shot attempts on its last possession in overtime and Josh Brown rebounded the loose ball. With three seconds left, Brown found Payton on the other side of the court with a Pioneer on his heels. Payton just missed the lay-in, but lost amongst the drama and chaos of the play was the whistle blown by the referee.
"I knew we didn't have much time, so I was trying to get a couple of dribbles in," Payton said of the last seconds. "I thought I missed it, but Josh told me I got the foul.
"I was like, ‘Oh, all right. I got a chance,'" he recalled.
On his way up to the rim, the officials ruled that he had been fouled, which rewarded the 6-foot-3-inch freshman with two potentially game-winning free throw shots.
"I was thinking about all that practice, and it was time for it to pay off," said Payton, who shot 6-of-9 from the free throw line.
"He's been at practice every day shooting free throws," said Brown. "I knew he was going to make it."
And make them he did. The foul call made the 3,611 UL fans erupt at the Cajundome, but it floored the entire Pioneer sideline that demanded an explanation, including Denver head coach Joe Scott.
"Let the players decide the game," Scott said. "I'm not going to debate whether it was a foul or not. I'm going to debate the merits of philosophy behind the inconsistency there.
"If you're not going to call the foul at the end of regulation," Scott said of the non-foul calls during Denver's last play, "then don't call them the whole game."
Despite the controversial ending, the Cajuns packed up their win and traveled eastward to face the Troy Trojans on Saturday. UL returned home that night with a 83-78 victory.
Behind Bryant Mbamalu's 27-point performance, 25 of which he registered in the second half, UL extended its win streak to a season-best four games.
The Houston native knocked down two consecutive buckets from downtown late in the second half, pushing the Trojans into a hole out of which they could not climb.
With less than a month until the Sun Belt Tournament, the winner of which punches its ticket to the NCAA Tournament, the Cajuns must continue to finish close games and rely on the depth of their roster to have big games and make big shots when needed. UALR (11-13, 8-2), last season's tournament champion, enters Thursday's matchup riding a three-game winning surge.
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