Harding 86, San Francisco St. 73
The first half of this game was a game of runs. norm24 and Harding raced out to a 14-5 lead in the game's opening 5 minutes and then platoisek's San Francisco St. team went on a 12-2 run of their own to go up by a point at the 12:39 mark of the first half. The rest of the first half was pretty close until Harding closed it out with a 11-4 run over the final 2 minutes of the half to go into the lockerroom up 45-39. The second half was all Harding, with Harding's lead never falling below 5 points on their way to an 86-73 victory, led by 18 points from C Robet Bartsch and 17 points off the bench from SF Joseph Bean. Harding also played great team defense, forcing San Francisco St. into 20 turnovers, which it turned into 19 points.
Christian Brothers 66, CSU Bakersfield 63
This was a fantastic back-and-forth affair, with neither team leading by more than 6 points the whole way. Down 59-54 with just over 5 minutes to play, tianyi7886's Christian Brothers squad went on a 12-4 run over the remainder of the game on the road to pick up the win. Christian Brothers was led by PG Raymond Roberts' 21 points and 6 boards out of the 2-spot in the lineup in the win. Christian Brothers held CSU Bakersfield to just 37.7% shooting from the floor in the contest. The 2 teams committed a combined 43 fouls as the refs got a little whistle happy, with CSU Bakersfield losing 2 starters to fouls in the game. A quick look at the stat sheet shows this was a very even contest, with a rebounding differential of 1, the same number of assists, a turnover differential of 1, and close numbers in many other stat lines.
This has been a 1-sided conference challenge so far, with the Gulf South now holding a commanding 5-0 lead. The only way the CCAA can win the Challenge is by winning all 5 remaining games by at least 82 points, which seems pretty unlikely.