Final Stats HUNTSVILLE, Texas – After making just six shots in the first half, the Nicholls State University basketball team regrouped in the second half to shoot 60 percent from the field and got 22 points from junior guard Dantrell Thomas on the night to defeat the Sam Houston State Bearkats 56-53 Thursday night in Huntsville.

With the win the Colonels improve to 8-18 on the year and 7-8 in Southland Conference play, as Nicholls earned its fourth win on the road and first since January. With the loss the Bearkats fall to 14-14 on the year and 7-8 in league play, getting swept by Nicholls in a season for the first time since 2011.

After getting just 17 points at the break, the Colonels took a page from the Sam Houston playbook and got a lot of people involved during the second half as four players scored five or more points to finish the game, with every point playing a role in the three-point win. The Colonels made 12-of-20 shots in the period for a 60-percent clip, drilling four 3-pointers and converting 11-of-18 free throw attempts to get ahead of the Bearkats for good late.

Thomas took the game over in the second half scoring 17 of his game-high 22 in the second period, going 7-for-12 on the night with three 3-pointers and a perfect 5-for-5 night at the charity stripe. The junior scored the last seven Nicholls points, including the 3-pointer that gave the Colonels the tenth and final lead change of the night going up 52-51 with 44 seconds remaining in the game. Thomas came into the game with just six made three's on the season, but against Sam Houston State he finished one shy of tying his career-high for most makes in a contest with four.

Senior guard Fred Hunter had a tough night offensively, going 3-for-6 from the field and 4-of-13 at the free throw line, but the veteran Colonel still found a way to be effective by pulling down a career best 14 rebounds for his eighth double-double of the year to go along with his ten points, four assists and two steals. T.J. Carpenter scored nine points on the night while JaMarkus Horace got all five of his points at the free throw line.

The Colonels broke a 4-4 tie with a 3-pointer by Amin Torres to go up 7-4 and began to get hot outscoring the Bearkats 11-2 spanning nearly five minutes to take a 15-6 lead with the first half nearly over. But once Nicholls got to the 15-point mark, the offense completely stalled allowing Sam Houston to go on a big run to overtake the Colonels and go into the halftime break leading 20-17 as Nicholls didn't score another bucket from the field until the start of the second half.

The Bearkats weren't absolved from an abysmal shooting first half as Sam Houston State also had just six made field goals in the first, but the Bearkats took advantage of their opportunities at the free throw line going 7-for-8 while Nicholls was 3-for-9. It all changed in the second as Sam finished the game getting popped for 24 total fouls to Nicholls' 18, going to the line just ten times in the final half to finish with 18 attempts, or the total number of attempts the Colonels had in the second alone.

With both teams shooting well from the field in the final 20 minutes, there would be a total of six ties and ten lead changes over the course of the game, as the largest Sam lead at any point during the contest was just four points, with that last instance coming with 18 minutes left in the second. After combining for just 37 points in the first, both squads exploded for 72 in the second, as both Nicholls and Sam Houston finished with 18 made field goals, ten coming from behind the arc.

The Colonels return to action on Saturday night, taking on the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders at 7:30 p.m. at the American Bank Center.