Dane Smith career night vs undefeated Murray State

Dane Smith

The University of Tennessee at Martin men’s basketball team gave No. 9 Murray State all it wanted tonight, but the Racers escaped with a 65-58 victory in front of 4,700 fans at the Kathleen and Tom Elam Center.

Senior Dane Smith enjoyed his best career game this evening for the Skyhawks (3-22, 0-12 Ohio Valley Conference), recording his second career double-double with a career-best 24 points and 11 rebounds in 36 minutes of play. The 11 rebounds were just one shy of his career-high of 12 at Tennessee on Dec. 29, 2010.

“Dane was just playing hard, competing and doing all the little things – which is who Dane is,” James said. “He’s a fill-in-the-blanks guy and we definitely saw that tonight.”

“Games come down to about four or five possessions,” James said. “There were about five possessions tonight that our guys just couldn’t score. We got stops when we needed to – we just couldn’t score and that hurt. That was the deciding factor at the end of the day.”

Smith got the Skyhawks going to start the second half, pouring in eight of the team’s first 12 points to help slice their deficit to 41-36 with 14:12 remaining. However, Murray State scored eight consecutive points to go ahead 49-36 with 11:15 to go.

UT Martin kept fighting, clawing within seven points off a Smith layup with 8:08 left to play. Seven straight points by Smith – capped off with an old-fashioned three-point play at the 4:30 mark – inched the Skyhawks within six at 55-49.

A layup by Long on Murray State’s next possession stretched the Racer lead to eight, but Corderio Maclin came up with a big bucket at the 4:05 mark to make the score 57-51. The Skyhawk defense would hold Murray State without a field goal for a stretch of 3:31, but four free throws in that span resulted in a 10-point lead for the Racers with 48 seconds left.

A Smith three-pointer from the left side with four seconds left capped off his career evening and provide the final score of 65-58.