Dec. 21, 2007

Final Stats

UTEP-USC Upstate Box Score (PDF)

UTEP fended off USC Upstate 77-69 on Friday at the Don Haskins Center to earn a berth in the championship game of the 47th annual State Farm Sun Bowl Tournament.

The Miners (7-2) will be playing for their first tournament title since 2004 on Saturday when they face either Buffalo or Wyoming at 7 p.m. MDT.

"We may not be a great team, but the sign of a pretty good team is to win an ugly game," UTEP coach Tony Barbee said.

UTEP was pretty good at the beginning of the first half, scoring the game's first 10 points. The Miners were pretty good at the beginning of the second half as well, using an 8-0 run to turn a 31-30 deficit into a 38-31 lead.

They were outscored 69-59 the rest of the game by the Spartans (2-9), who are in their inaugural year playing at the Division I level but were coming off a 58-56 victory at SMU on Tuesday.

"They are well-coached, they play hard and they fought until the end," Barbee said.

Stefon Jackson scored 26 points to lead the Miners, leaving him only four shy of 1,000 for his career. Jackson went to the line 19 times - making 12 - as UTEP shot 39 free throws, including 29 in the second half. Jackson's 19 free throw attempts tied for the fifth-best game total in school history.

Randy Culpepper scored in double figures for the third straight game off the bench, finishing with 16 points and a UTEP freshman record six steals. Marvin Kilgore added 10 points and seven assists.

Bobby Davis and Luke Payne each scored 11 points for USC Upstate, which committed 32 turnovers - leading to 40 points for UTEP. The Spartans outrebounded the Miners 41-35 and shot 49 percent from the field.

"We started the game well but couldn't sustain it, which comes back to toughness," Barbee said. "There are two areas where toughness shows up in the stat sheet - one is rebounding, and the other is defensive field goal percentage. We let a team that was shooting 38 percent on the season shoot 50 percent against us, which is unacceptable."

The Miners will try to turn things around on Saturday as they vie for their 27th tournament trophy.