Final Stats NEW ORLEANS, La. – Down by just one point with less than three minutes remaining, the Nicholls State University men's basketball team would be held to just one point for the rest of the game as the Colonels fell to the New Orleans Privateers 70-64 Thursday night at the UNO Lakefront Arena.

Trailing 53-49 midway through the final period, Nicholls (10-11, 7-5 SLC) went on a 7-0 run take a brief 54-53 lead over the Privateers (10-10, 7-5) with 8:56 to go. Even as UNO outscored the Colonels 11-9 over the next five-plus minutes, Nicholls still found itself within one point of the home side after a Thomas 3-pointer to make it 64-63.

Unfortunately for the visitors, that 3-pointer would be the final basket of the game for the team as UNO went on to cap the contest with a 6-1 run over the final 36 seconds to pull ahead for good. In the final eight minutes of the game, New Orleans held Nicholls to just 10 points on 2-of-7 shooting and 4-of-9 from the free throw line, while making six shots and converting on four free throws and sending Nicholls to its third consecutive loss.

Smith led Nicholls with 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting from the field, while Sam McBeath scored 11 with three 3-pointers off of the bench. Dantrell Thomas scored 10 points to go along with his three assists and two steals, while T.J. Carpenter scored six points and grabbed a season high eight rebounds.

Although Nicholls had one more player score in double figures, New Orleans got most of its offense from Cory Dixon as he finished with a game-high 26 points and one rebound away from a double-double. Where Dixon made his mark was at the free throw line as he converted 16-of-17 from the stripe, making four more than the Colonels made as an entire team on the night. Traddarius McPhearson was the only other player for UNO to earn double-digit points scoring 14.

Nicholls scored just 29 points in the first half with a 44 percent clip from the floor in the process, regrouping to score 35 in the second half to finish the night 23-for-51 and a 45 percent mark shooting as a group. New Orleans fared even worse from the floor in the first 20 minutes, making just nine shots total in the first half, but made up for it in a big way with 16-of-17 made free throws.

The entire script flipped in the second half, as the Privateers shot 50 percent and went to the line just six times, making five. Nicholls proved to be its own worst enemy at the charity stripe, making just above half of their shots at the line to finish 12-for-22 while UNO was 21-for-25.

There were four ties and six lead changes throughout the duration of the game, with nearly all of them coming in the first ten minutes of the first half. Frye earned the first two of his seven points on the night off of two free throws to give Nicholls a 19-17 lead with 7:36 left in the first. New Orleans countered with a 19-10 run to close out the half and give the Privateers a 35-29 lead at the break.

At that point, Dixon had already scored 14 points for UNO while the leading scorer at that point for the Colonels was McBeath with five points, while Thomas, Carpenter, Amin Torres and Frye each had four, while Luke Doyle and Shane Rillieux had three each. It seemed as of the Colonels were going to get a balanced effort from the entire group, but in the end the second belonged to Smith who scored all 16 in the second half, as McBeath and Thomas had six each.

The Colonels will be back in action on Saturday, closing out a four-game road swing with the Southeastern Louisiana Lions in Hammond.