Silver City, NM -- Western New Mexico rebounded from Thursday's loss at Grand Canyon to defeat Oklahoma Panhandle State 94-87 in a double overtime thriller Saturday in Silver City. The conference win improved WNMU's season mark to 4-16, 4-3 HC and moves the Stangs to third place in the Heartland standings. OPSU fell to 6-16, 3-4 HC.
Western controlled the game for most of the regulation 40 minutes, leading by as many as 12 points at the seven minute mark, but turnovers and poor shot selection was costly as the Aggies methodically improved their position until they tied the game up at 73 with Eddie Moss' 3-pointer with seven seconds left in regulation.
The first overtime looked like Panhandle would win the game as the Aggies held a 2-point lead with just nine seconds left. A costly turnover on an inbound pass gave WNMU the ball back and senior Adam Grimes made the most of it as he got clean-up duty with a key rebound and put-back off a missed long range Jason Jackson 3-point attempt to send the game into a second overtime.
Tied at 83 apiece, the two teams battled during each possession with Panhandle taking the early lead, but the Mustangs fought back and sealed the deal with Matt Enriquez's 3-pointer at the 37-second mark to get Western up by 4. The Aggies responded with a 2-pointer from Moss, but WNMU got two free throws each from Trey Clarkson and Mike Sells to get to the final nine-point margin.
Matt Enriquez led all scorers with one of his best performances as a Mustang with 31 points while Mike Sells was almost as impressive with 26. Trey Clarkson and Jason Jackson added 16 and 10 points respectively to add to the winning tally.
Eddie Moss led the Aggies with 26 points, but got double-figure help from Aaron Harrison (16), William Preston (12) and Juan Carson (11).
WNMU won the shooting battle, knocking down 54 percent of their shots, while OPSU made half of their attempts.
The Mustangs will get a weekend in San Antonio next week with a double header at St. Mary's on March 8-9 and Incarnate Word on March 11.
