UAA Athletics

Pair of hot hands push UAA men’s basketball team to victory in conference opener

Tyrus Hosley and Jack Macdonald came off the bench to ignite the UAA men’s basketball team Thursday at the Alaska Airlines Center.

Their red-hot shooting lifted the Seawolves to an 81-74 win over Concordia-Portland on the first night of play in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.

Hosley, a 6-foot-1 senior guard in his first season at UAA, scored 22 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the field and 6-of-6 shooting from the free throw line. He scored the game’s final four points from the foul line to help UAA ward off the Cavaliers.

Macdonald, a 6-0 senior point guard, added 13 points on 5 of 7 shooting. The Seawolves shot 49 percent from the field, an effort that allowed them to survive 18 turnovers and a late scare.

UAA led by double digits with 2:27 remaining, but Concordia fought back to cut the lead to three, 77-74, with 22 seconds left.

Hosley hit two free throws to make it 79-74 and then rebounded a missed layup by the Cavs and drew a foul. He hit his final two free throws with five seconds remaining.

Hosley and Macdonald were part of a balanced lineup that got 48 points from the bench. The Seawolves sank 44.4 percent of their 3-point attempts (12 of 27), led by Hosley (4 of 5), Macdonald (3 of 5) and Niko Bevens, a senior forward who drained 3 of 4 on his way to 11 points.

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“We’ve got to be better with protecting possessions and not being so loose with the ball,” UAA coach Rusty Osborne said in a release from the school. “We let them get back into it late, but luckily our shooters got just hot enough to carry us to a win. Tyrus is getting more comfortable in the offense every game, and that really shined through tonight.”

Hosley transferred to UAA after two seasons at Northwest Christian, an NAIA school in Eugene, Oregon. He dropped 30 points on GNAC champion Saint Martin’s last season and has scored in double figures in three straight games for the Seawolves. His brother, Antoine, set the GNAC single-game scoring record of 50 points in 2015 while playing for Montana State-Billings.

UAA (7-2 overall, 1-0 GNAC) outrebounded Concordia 37-33 behind seven rebounds each by Hosley and junior center David Riley and six by junior forward Tyler Brimhall.

Hunter Sweet finished with 18 points for Concordia (1-8, 0-1).

The Seawolves return to the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday for a 5:15 p.m. conference game against Western Oregon. Western Oregon is 5-1 after losing its first game of the season Thursday in Fairbanks, where the Nanooks took a 70-66 victory.

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