As the men’s basketball team qualified for the GAC championship, they headed to Fort Smith, Arkansas to compete in the tournament. Their first challenger will be the Ouachita Baptist University Tigers. The Rangers had not defeated the Tigers once this season, losing to them 79-78 in their last game on February 8.
The quarter-finals game started off slow, as the first points weren’t scored until two minutes into the game. Cameron McDowell shot a three pointer to score the first points of the game. It was responded quickly with a layup for Ouachita Baptist. The two teams then traded three pointers. After that the Tigers shot two free throws and took the lead by one point. They extended their lead to four after that with a three pointer. The Rangers were able to take the lead a minute later and led the game by one. The Tigers then took the lead right back from Northwestern and extended their lead to eight. Minutes later their lead was thirteen.
The Rangers were able to start to reel the Tigers in but once they got them down to only a nine-point lead, the Tigers opened up again. Ouachita Baptist increased their lead to fifteen with five minutes left in the half. The Rangers made an attempt to shrink the Tigers’ lead at the end of the half, but as soon as there was a sense of it happening, the Tigers opened up once again and increased their lead to 16 with 27 seconds left in the first half. A field goal from Justin Norris brought it down to 14 with just three seconds left and the half ended 42-28 for Ouachita Baptist.
At the start of the second half, the Rangers were able to start right out of the gate and scored two field goals to make it an eleven-point game. Once again, the Tigers started to slip and caught themselves and got their lead right back up. The Rangers seemed to be able to catch the Tigers on the wrong foot, but their issue was keeping them down. They could never keep Ouachita Baptist on the down side. At the eleven-minute mark, the game had been scoreless for three minutes. A series of free throws from McDowell broke the scoreless streak, but the Tigers responded almost immediately and the game was separated by 16 points.
Once again, with ten minutes left, McDowell hit a set of free throws and it was immediately responded with two points from the Tigers to keep the game at the same difference.
The next two minutes were scoreless until the two teams traded layups with eight minutes left. A free throw and a layup from McDowell started to shrink the Tigers lead, but Ouachita responded with a tip-in and the difference was once again fifteen. Two free throws from McDowell and a layup from Alexander helped to generate some momentum for the Rangers. Alexander then hit two free throws to make it an eleven-point game with three minutes left, but it was responded with a three pointer for the Tigers.
Daraun Clark hit a pair of free throws and it was a fifteen-point game after a single free throw from the Tigers. With just two minutes left in the game and being down fifteen points, the Rangers could only play for pride as the dawn of the season was before them.
Unfortunately, pride wasn’t enough for the Rangers and the Tigers extended their lead to twenty. The Rangers’ season ended with a quarter final loss against the Ouachita Baptist Tigers 60-80.