CARROLLTON, Ga. – The UWG men's basketball team remained at the top of the Gulf South Conference on Wednesday after an 86-66 win over the Auburn Montgomery Warhawks.
 
It was a tale of two halves for West Georgia (15-5, 14-4 GSC) as the Wolves used a strong second half, where they shot 58.5% from the field and held Auburn Montgomery to 38.7%, to propel themselves to their 14^th conference win of the year.
 
"It was a great team effort tonight", said head coach Dave Moore. "We had guys that came off our bench and gave us valuable minutes. We had some difficulties in the first half, but they shot 38% from the field and 33% from three in the second half vs 60% from three in the first half. That was the difference."
 
Despite shooting 31 percent from the field in the game's opening half, West Georgia trailed by just three at halftime. The Wolves only first half lead came off of a Zawdie Jackson three-pointer on the game's first possession. From there, AUM jumped on top and led by as much as nine while hitting six three-pointers in the first half. Five of those three-pointers came from Sam Youngblood who hit five in the half and had 19 points at the break.
 
But UWG's offense, led by 11 points from Jackson in the first half, stayed in the game by converting chances at the line. A Michael Zabetakis three-pointer with 31 seconds left momentarily tied the game up at 32-32 before Youngblood hit one in the half's final seconds to account for the three-point, AUM lead.
 
UWG started a gargantuan second half by going on a 9-2 run to take a 41-37 lead, less than three minutes into the half. In the next five minutes, the two teams went back-and-forth as we had seven lead changes and four ties, leading to a 57-57 ball game with 10:27 left to play. The Wolves would end the score-for-score sequence as a layup from Jackson sparked a 9-0 run to give West Georgia their largest lead of the night at 66-57.

With 7:07 left to play, Auburn Montgomery's leading scorer, Travis Anderson, made his first basket of the half which halted the UWG run for the time being until Zabetakis made a jumper that put West Georgia right back up by nine, heading into a media timeout. Out of the timeout, The Wolves wouldn't let the Warhawks get any closer than seven points and finished them off with a massive 16-3 run to cruise to a 20-point victory.

Zabetakis led the way with a game-high 29 points, while Jackson finished with 19. Jalen Sasser also recorded his second double-double of the season, finishing with 13 points and 10 rebounds while the UWG defense held AUM's duo of Travis Anderson and Jalen Gaston to seven points combined.

West Georgia will be back in action on Saturday when they take a short road trip to Rome, Georgia for a 4:00 p.m. GSC matchup with the Shorter Hawks.
 
We have to keep taking these games one at a time," coach Moore continued. "We've got six more opportunities to go with three at home and three on the road and we need them all.  That's the message, we need them all and to get them all we've got to take them one at a time."