Miners Sink Sam Houston State Behind Big First-Half Run

Lee Moore scored nine of his game-high 17 points in a 23-0 run early in the game, as UTEP snapped a five-game losing skid with an 87-68 rout of Sam Houston State on Tuesday at the Don Haskins Center.

The Miners (7-5) finished third in the WestStar Bank Don Haskins Sun Bowl Invitational and notched their first victory in the month of December to enter the holiday break on a high note.

“We were pleased with the win,” UTEP coach Tim Floyd said. “We’re not going to go too crazy with it. We understand that we’ve still got a long way to go as a basketball team. I thought we did a much better job tonight of keeping the ball out of the lane. We had guys loaded up in the lane and it really helped us. We went back and defensive rebounded it better against a team that doesn’t look like a great rebounding team physically, but they have been really good collectively.

The Miners will take a quick holiday break before returning to action on Tuesday , Dec. 29 against UT Rio Grande Valley in the Haskins Center, their final tuneup prior to the start of Conference USA play.

“I’m hoping that we can grow from this game,” Floyd said. “Our guys will get away from it for three days. We’ll be back the night of the 26th [practicing]. We’ll try to regroup and re-earn our crowd support. We played like a bunch of saps here a couple of games. But let me say this, every team that beat us is a good basketball team and I’m not sure whether Washington State will get there or not, but the rest of them will be in the NCAA Tournament. We’re a new group trying to figure it out right now, and maybe we took a step in that direction.”?