On Thursday night, App State took on the University of Texas at Arlington in a rematch of a 66-56 loss earlier this season. This time, App State’s O’Showen Williams had other plans and poured in a career-high 25 points. 

Head coach Dustin Kerns was pleased with the senior guard’s performance.

“He’s playing really confident, and I’m letting him play loose and free, and he’s obviously doing well with it,” Kerns said. “But he was in there at 8 o’clock this morning getting up shots. So, the magic is in the work…When you put the work in, that’s what happens.”

All season, junior guard Justin Forrest has been a go-to player for scoring production, but he finished with six points and had eight turnovers. Over the course of the season, multiple players have proved they can fill that void when needed.

“With this team, anybody can score 20 points,” Williams said. “(Hunter Seacat) had a double-double last week; (Adrian) Delph had some high scoring games; Isaac (Johnson) had some high scoring games; Kendall (Lewis) had a good game against them last time; I scored 20 plus points… We just do a good job of sharing the ball.”

During the first half, there were eight lead changes but App State went into halftime with a 31-25 lead and stayed ahead for the rest of the game. The defensive effort played a large role in keeping the lead.

“If we get a stop or a score, we’re going to feed off that type of energy,” Kerns said. “I thought we won the game defensively with some big stops.”

Part of that defensive effort included holding the Mavericks to shooting 8.3% from the three-point line. Forcing bad shots is a focus for App State.

“We try to influence your shots,” Kerns said. “Those are the shots we wanted to influence. When you take those shots, we want to affect them.”

Willams wasn’t the only player to will the Mountaineers to victory. Senior forward Hunter Seacat tacked on 13 points, and fellow senior forward Isaac Johnson added seven points and 10 rebounds.

With the win, App State improves to 13-11, and 7-6 in the Sun Belt. Now the Mountaineers look ahead to Saturday for their matchup against Texas State at 4 p.m.