CONWAY — The Central Arkansas men’s basketball team took off when Jarvis Garner took charge.
UCA had lost its first five Southland Conference games and was on the verge of losing a sixth at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Jan. 19. But the senior forward stepped up and scored 20 of his 23 points in the second half of the Bears’ 76-67 victory over the Islanders.
That was the beginning a three-game conference winning streak - UCA’s firstsince moving up to NCAA Division I in 2006-2007.
“We finally came together and started playing like a team,” said Garner, who helped lead the Bears to victories against McNeese State and Lamar last week. “We started sharing the ball and made the extra passes. Everybody is playing their role.
“We’re starting to do what we do best.”
Garner, 6-7, 210 pounds, is averaging a team-high 16.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game entering tonight’s Southland Conference matchup against Southeastern Louisiana at the Farris Center. He is third in the conference in scoring, behind Oral Roberts’ Warren Niles (19.0) and Nicholls State’s Fred Hunter (17.4).
“Jarvis is a matchup nightmare,” UCA Coach Corliss Williamson said. “He can score inside as well as shoot outside from the perimeter. He’s meant a lot to this team. He’s been the heart and soul of this team.”
Garner is averaging 23 points in the Bears’ past three games. He tied his career-high with 38 points in UCA’s 103-98 triple-overtime victory against McNeese State last Thursday. Garner, who also had 15 rebounds against the Cowboys, hit game-tying three-pointers at the end of regulation and in the first overtime of that game, finishing 14 of 19 from the floor and 6 of 9 from threepoint range.
“I had a couple of games where my shooting was up and down,” Garner said. “Coach preached to me that I have the ability to take it to the rack, get to the foul line and get myself going in other ways than shooting threes, but it was a game where I wasn’t missing too many. So, he told me to keep shooting and I did.”
Garner transferred to UCA from Connors State (Okla.) College, where he played with Bears senior guard Robert Crawford for one season and averaged 14.0 points and 9.0 rebounds as a sophomore. The former Conway High School standout chose UCA over Arkansas, Memphis, Oklahoma, Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Idaho, Florida A&M and Texas Southern.
Garner played in 29 games last season, including 23 starts, and averaged 10.2 points and 6.0 rebounds in 22.4 minutes for UCA.
Williamson said that the adjustment from junior college to Division I basketball can be tough for some players, and it was for Garner until the second half of the season.
“We saw a preview of what we would see this year,” Williamson said. “This year, he’s just more comfortable. He’s more suited to our personnel.”
UCA has an opportunity to reach .500 for the first time this late in the season since joining the Southland Conference with victories tonight against Southeastern Louisiana (7-11, 5-3) and Saturday against Nicholls State (6-12, 5-3).
“We’re not going to let up. We’re still hungry,” Garner said. “We haven’t done anything. We haven’t proven anything. We just set ourselves up in position to be pretty decent.”
Sports, Pages 19 on 01/31/2013