SEGUIN, Texas â€" A year after finishing eighth in the eight-team Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, the Texas Lutheran Bulldogs are regular-season co-champions and the top seed for the upcoming SCAC Championship Tournament.
 
First-year Head Coach Jimmy Smith and the Bulldogs, cheered on by a raucous crowd of 1,439 in Memorial Gymnasium, overcame an eight-point, second-half deficit in rolling to a 75-63 win Friday over Southwestern.
 
Southwestern took a 42-34 lead with 16:28 remaining, but TLU closed the game on a 41-21 run to sweep the season series from the Pirates and tie Centenary (La.) for the regular-season title.
 
The Bulldogs claimed the top seed by virtue of a tiebreaker with Centenary.
 
TLU improved to 16-9 overall and to 11-3 in the SCAC.
 
Southwestern dropped to 13-10 overall and to 8-6 in the SCAC.
 
Donte McGee, a senior forward from Victoria (Memorial), scored 11 of his 14 points in the second half and grabbed nine of his 12 rebounds.
 
Sophomore guard Jordan Kouremetis (San Antonio/O'Connor) led TLU with 15 points despite going 1-for-8 from the three-point line.
 
TLU out-rebounded Southwestern 47-32 overall and 13-5 on the offensive glass.
 
After shooting 50 percent from the field in the first half, the Pirates managed just 34.4 percent in the second.
 
TLU went from 37 percent in the first to 44.8 percent in the second.
 
The Bulldogs went 3-for-19 as a team from the three-point line but went to the free throw line 17 more times than the Pirates.
 
TLU scored 26 points at the charity stripe, compared to only eight for Southwestern.
 
The Bulldogs flipped their conference record from last year and travel to Irving, Texas for the 2014-15 SCAC Championship Tournament as the No. 1 seed.
 
The Bulldogs have a bye into the conference tournament semifinals, which will be played Saturday at the University of Dallas. Tournament games times have yet to be announced.
 
TLU will have live video and live stats for all SCAC tournament games from Irving. All links can be found on tlubulldogs.com.