Liberty closed the game on a 7-0 run to pull out a 73-64 road win over the UTEP Miners and improve to a perfect 14-0 in Conference USA play, Saturday afternoon at the Don Haskins Center.<\/p>\n
The Flames run their overall winning streak to 16 games, the third longest in the nation, and improve to 22-3 on the year. Liberty is a perfect 8-0 in CUSA road games after the triumph. UTEP drops to 10-16 overall and 6-9 in CUSA following the setback. The Miners, who had won back-to-back games coming into the day, fall to 8-6 at home and 4-4 in league games at the Don Haskins Center.<\/p>\n
JJ Harper led the way on the offensive end for Liberty with 18 points while adding six rebounds, an assist, two blocks and a steal. Brett Decker Jr. (17 points), Zach Cleveland (13 points, six rebounds, five assists) and Colin Porter (10 points, three steals) joined Harper in double figures.<\/p>\n
The Flames trailed by 10 in the first half, 25-15, before closing the stanza on a 13-1 run to take a 28-26 lead into the break.<\/p>\n
In the second half, Liberty used a 12-2 run to take its biggest lead of the game, 53-41, with 9:05 to go on a Kaden Metheny layup. UTEP closed the gap and got within three, 60-57 at the 3:40 mark following a Kaseem Watson layup. The Miners cut the deficit to two, 66-64 at the 1:42 mark on a Watson layup, but Liberty answered with a 7-0 run to win by nine. Colin Porter hit a crucial fadeaway jumper late in the shot clock at the 1:09 mark to bump the lead to 68-64. After a defensive stop on the other end on a blocked shot by JJ Harper, Brett Decker Jr. knocked down two free throws. Following another stop, Porter buried two shots from the charity stripe for a 72-64 lead with 19 seconds left. Liberty’s Zander Carter connected on one last foul shot for the final point of the game.<\/p>\n
The Flames will return home to face the FIU Panthers (12-13, 5-9 CUSA), Thursday night. Tip time from Liberty Arena is 6 p.m. The game can be seen on CBS Sports Network.<\/p>\n
Liberty claimed the first meeting on the road at FIU by a 97-94 score in overtime, Dec. 28 in the CUSA opener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liberty closed the game on a 7-0 run to pull out a 73-64 road win over the UTEP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-165464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}