Final Stats TULSA, Okla. – In a complete offensive slugfest, the Nicholls State University men's basketball team put up a much better effort against Oral Roberts on Thursday than it did in the first meeting, but the Golden Eagles shot nearly 65 percent in the game and had enough firepower to hold off the Colonels for good late to pull out the 90-78 win over Nicholls at the Mabee Center in Tulsa.

With the loss the Colonels fall to 6-13 overall on the season and 5-4 in Southland Conference action, while ORU improves to 13-8 and 8-1 in league play, as Nicholls sees its record in road games fall to 2-10.

After a litany of ties and lead changes in the first half, the team that flinched first was going to get left in the dust, as neither team was going to ease off the scoring pedal. By the end of the game, both teams scored more in the second half than it did in the first, with the Golden Eagles scoring 53 points in the second to the Colonels' 41.

Fred Hunter led all players with 33 points on 11-of-15 shooting in the game, making 11-of-14 free throws, as he was the only player from Nicholls to go to the charity stripe on the night. It's the second 30-plus point game of the senior's career, as well as it being the 25th game with 20 or more points in his career. Amin Torres set a new career high with his 17 points off of the bench with three 3-pointers, while Dantrell Thomas scored 12. Torres outscored the entire Oral Roberts bench by himself, 17-11, in 31 minutes of action.

Although the Golden Eagles came out firing and scored the first five points in a 12-8 run over the first few minutes of the second, the Colonels were able to weather the storm that had them down by as many as six points at 51-45, to come back and pull to within two as Nicholls went on a 6-2 run to make the score 53-51 with a little over 13 minutes left in the game. Unfortunately it would be the closest the Colonels got for the rest of the half, as ORU's key players took over and slowly built up a small lead that Oral Roberts was able to hold on to and grow to as many as 14 points late to hold on for the win.

By the end of the game, ORU had four players finish the night in double figures, led by Shawn Glover who has three consecutive games with 24 points or more with his 25, followed by Warren Niles' 24 points on 4-of-8 from behind the 3-point line. The Golden Eagles shot 62 percent in the game, while the Colonels finished with a 54-percent clip.

In the first meeting in Thibodaux, the Colonels went into the locker room trailing the Golden Eagles by 17 points. But, in the second meeting on Thursday night the Colonels got much better play all-around as the team went into the halftime break tied at 37 points each. The two teams went shot-for-shot as Nicholls shot 56 percent in the first half on 15-for-27 shooting, as ORU hit 70 percent of its shots on 16-for-23 from the floor.

There were 12 ties and four lead changes in the first half, as the largest lead by either team at that point was just six points for ORU which came with 8:28 left in the half. With ORU up 23-17, the Colonels went on to outscore the Golden Eagles 20-14 over the final eight minutes to knot the game at 37.

Hunter was the leading scorer of the half with 16 points, but Nicholls had two things working in its favor as it held ORU's two leading scorers in Niles and Damen Bell-Holter to just 14 combined points and attacked Bell-Holter from the outset and got the 6-9 forward into foul trouble as he only played 11 first-half minutes. However, ORU got 12 points from Glover who missed just two shots in the half.

The Colonels also got ten points from Torres, who hit two big 3-pointers in the period and was 4-for-5 from the field as the freshman outscored ORU's entire bench 10-7. There weren't many free throws taken by both teams, as Hunter made all four for Nicholls in the first while the Golden Eagles were 3-for-4.

Nicholls opens the month of February on Saturday afternoon, taking on the Central Arkansas Bears at 4 p.m. in the Farris Center in Conway.