This week’s road trip will decide whether the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff ends its two-year absence from the Southwestern Athletic Conference men’s basketball tournament.
UAPB heads to Mississippi to conclude the regular season with two road games. The Golden Lions will play at Jackson State at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, then Alcorn State on Saturday.
Head coach Solomon Bozeman said UAPB must approach this week one game at a time, as the Golden Lions have all season.
“Just make sure we continue to focus on getting better,” Bozeman said. “Focus on ourselves. Focus on making sure we’re disciplined on the defensive end and being super connected and playing for each other on the offensive end, and everything else will take care of itself.”
UAPB (13-16, 8-8 SWAC) last played in the SWAC tournament in 2021, losing to JSU in the opening round. With two games remaining, the Golden Lions are guaranteed to finish in the top nine of the SWAC standings, but only the top eight teams will travel to Birmingham, Ala., next week.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The Golden Lions enter the week tied with Alabama A&M for seventh. Alabama State is one game behind the pair. UAPB would lose a two-team tiebreaker with either Alabama school as well as a three-way tiebreaker with both, so the Golden Lions need to finish with a better record than at least one of them.
UAPB can clinch a spot Thursday with a win at Jackson State (13-16, 9-7) and an Alabama State loss, or UAPB can clinch Saturday by winning both its games. If UAPB goes 1-1 this week, the Golden Lions would need Alabama State to go 1-1 or 0-2 or Alabama A&M to go 0-2. If UAPB goes 0-2, Alabama State must also go 0-2. The Alabama schools host Southern and Grambling State this week.
The Golden Lions lost at home to Jackson State and Alcorn State (12-17, 11-5) just under a month ago, but UAPB was without guard Rashad Williams in those two games.
Williams missed that weekend with a wrist injury but has since returned to the UAPB lineup. He has averaged 19.2 points in the five games since. The Golden Lions went 3-2 in those games. Williams said he was able to watch and analyze those two games he missed from the bench.
“Got to see what we did wrong, and where I could come in and make an impact, do what needs to be done,” Williams said. “I can do those little things, but I think we’re going in to get those two wins.”
In the past two games, guard Joe French has gotten back to his normal scoring habits. He finished with 20 points against Texas Southern and 21 against Mississippi Valley State after making a combined 13 3-pointers. He had gone seven-straight games without surpassing 16 points, which included two games he scored fewer than 10.
Bozeman said French worked hard to get his shooting back to this level.
“He’s always in the gym, but his confidence is at an all-time high right now, because he puts in the work,” Bozeman said. “Just having Joe where his confidence is as high as it is right now is a huge advantage… We were down about that loss [to Texas Southern], but the one positive that we talked about from that loss is we think Joe found himself in that second half, so that’s definitely going to be huge for us going forward.”