Quinn's career night leads Hardin-Simmons men's basketball past East Texas Baptist

A career night from Steven Quinn helped the Hardin-Simmons men's basketball team close Thursday night's 84-75 win against East Texas Baptist at the Mabee Complex.

The win snapped a three-game losing streak and was the first win for the Cowboys (11-4 overall, 7-3 ASC) since Dec. 16 against Ozarks.

"It feels pretty good (to win)," HSU coach Matt Brackett said. "I'm just proud of them. We've been talking about adversity and to be resilient when you face adversity. No matter what challenges or obstacles you're faced with, just be resilient and fight through it and be tough. That's all we've been talking about these last few weeks."

On Thursday, that adversity was a short bench.

The Cowboys played without three regulars, including a pair of starters. That left a rotation of mostly six players with two others playing five minutes and one minute. Four players played at least 37 minutes of the 40-minute game.

But no one came up bigger than Quinn.

He scored a career-high 31 points on 8 of 11 shooting, including a pair of 3-pointers, and was 13 of 14 from the free throw line. He was perfect on eight attempts in the final minute.

"I challenged him to take 20 shots today," Brackett said of Quinn. "He didn't because he's so unselfish. But I told him before the game, 'You're taking 20 shots today' and I asked the team if they had a problem with it and clearly nobody did. I told him at halftime, you need to get us 13 more shots because he was behind.

"The team is behind him and knows how valuable he is to our team scoring. Getting to the line 14 times and scoring the ball after coming off a little slump last week, I know is going to be huge for his confidence."

He got help, too. Aidan Walsh scored 16 points, playing 40 minutes, Will Bartoszek had 13 points and nine rebounds while Chase Cobb finished with 11 points.

"Ryan Eastman, our FCA rep, he gave a good speech to our guys about trust," Brackett said. "I thought that, being resilient and facing adversity, it brings trust to a team and we tied that all together."

The last loss came by two points on a last-second shot against Sul Ross State after leading by 19.

HSU led Thursday's game by as many as 13 but the lead went away. The Tigers (8-9, 6-5) took a 49-47 lead, but it didn't last long. The Cowboys answered with an 8-0 run to regain the lead.

Though ETBU would not lead again, it tied the game at 57 with 7:38 to play. This time it was a 10-3 run that would put the Cowboys back in front for good.

"We finished the game really well and I thought our guys did a really good job controlling the pace of the game," Brackett said. "They pressed us and zone pressed us in the half court. We've seen that and, at times, we'd rush it to try and score early and it would result in contested shots.

"We wanted to control the pace of the game and get into our offense and get the ball to spots we know we're successful. That's what we did pretty much the entire game. They showed really good discipline."

The Cowboys now have extra time to rest and get ready for next week's games after Belhaven had to cancel Saturday's contest due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols. And, with the win, HSU is still in a good position as it tries for the season sweep of Mary Hardin-Baylor. The Cowboys won 80-77 on Dec. 11 against the then-No. 9 Cru.

"It was a huge win because we didn't want our team to lose confidence," Brackett said. "We dropped some games we felt like we should have won, that could have put us at the top of the conference, but we just continue to remind them to be resilient. We're only one game out of first place going into Mary Hardin-Baylor next week."

Jordan Hofeditz covers Abilene high schools and colleges, Big Country schools and other local sports. Follow him on Twitter at @jhofeditz. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Quinn leads Hardin-Simmons men's basketball past East Texas Baptist