The UTRGV men’s basketball team took down Northwestern State on Monday night 74-62 in the team’s regular season finale.

With the win, UTRGV clinches the No. 3 seed in the Southland Conference tournament and secures a first round bye in the process.

The Vaqueros started off the game shaky, quickly falling into an 8-3 deficit early on in the first half. However, those struggles were short lived. The Vaqueros went on a 15-2 run at that point, moving in front 18-10 and UTRGV never trailed from that point forward.

At one point in the second half, UTRGV’s lead was cut down to just three, but the Vaqueros responded with a 11-2 run to keep the Demons at bay.

Koree Cotton led the way for the Vaqueros with 21 points in the win, but Cotton was quick to credit his teammates instead of himself during his postgame press conference.

“I want to give a shout out to my freshman Julien,” Cotton said at the podium. “It doesn’t show up in the stat sheet, but he was tasked today with guarding one of the best scorers in the Southland, Michael Thomas. Great player. As a freshman that’s a hard task. He stepped up… He just did his job to the max and he gave him a hard night tonight and I just want to give him a shoutout.”

The Vaqueros will tip-off their first game of the tournament on Monday, March 9th at 7:30 p.m. against the winner of the game between No. 6 Nicholls and No. 7 Northwestern State. UTRGV split the matchups against both teams during the conference season.