Jackson's career night powers Wolves over Bucs

“Obviously it was big time performance tonight from Zawdie,” said head coach Dave Moore. “He really dictated the game offensively especially in the second half. When you have a point guard that you trust, who doesn’t turn the ball over, and makes good decisions, it makes the end of the games a lot simpler.”

CBU got out to a 10-7 lead, five minutes into the game before Camron Donatlan buried a three to tie the game. The lead continued to seesaw for majority of the first half until UWG went on a 7-0 run to take a five-point lead with 3:52 left in the half.

A couple minutes later, Michael Zabetakis scored his fifth point of the game which put him at 1,392 career points, passing Marquill Smith for third on the UWG All-Time Scoring list. After Zabetakis’ historic bucket, Jackson buried his third three of the game at the buzzer to send West Georgia into the break up by seven.

The Wolves shot 52% from the field and 54.5% from three in the first half, while winning the rebounding battle by three. Jackson led the way offensively with 13 points.

The Bucs came out fast in the second half as they quickly cut West Georgia’s lead to one, 57 seconds into the half before a Zabetakis and Jackson led 6-0 run put UWG right back up by seven. That 6-0 run from the Wolves swung the momentum heavily into the favor of West Georgia as UWG took their largest lead of the night, at 58-46, after a pull up jumper from J.J. Barnes. West Georgia was in the process of pulling away from Christian Brothers as UWG went up by as much as 15 before CBU went on a 18-7 run to cut the Wolves lead to five with 6:54 left.

With all of the momentum on the side of the Bucs, West Georgia responded in a massive way, by going on a big 9-0 run to steal all of the momentum right back and to extend their lead to 13 with 3:59 left. Christian Brother’s Aiden Ruthsatz, who scored a game-high 38 points, tried to keep the Bucs in it by going on a personal 7-2 run, but the deficit was too much to overcome as the Wolves went on to secure their sixth straight victory.

It was a good group effort,” coach Moore continued. “Christian Brothers is tough to play against because they play so hard and the Ruthsatz kid really rose to the occasion and had a special night. It’s special to win at Christian Brothers for the first time that I’ve been here and overall, it was just a road win that we really needed.”

Along with Jackson’s career-high 36 points, Zabetakis added 15 points, six assists, and five rebounds while J.J. Barnes scored 10 points and grabbed six rebounds off the bench.

West Georgia will close out their two-game road trip on Wednesday when they travel to Pensacola, Florida for a GSC matchup against West Florida.