UT Tyler's Eysan Wiley is a 6-5 graduate student from Columbia, Mo. 

Exactly nine years ago from Wednesday, the UT Tyler Patriots set a program record for most points scored in a basketball game.

The Patriots nearly topped that mark as they opened the 2021-22 season with a 116-57 win over Southwestern Adventist University on Wednesday afternoon at the Herrington Patriot Center.

The program record is 119 points in a 119-98 win over Paul Quinn on Nov. 17, 2012.

It was the highest point total for the Patriots under head coach Louis Wilson, who is in his third season with the program. The previous high was 114 points against Dallas Christian in a 114-61 victory on Nov. 12, 2019. The Patriots took a 106-67 win over Dallas Christian in 2020. Dallas Christian visits Tyler for a 3 p.m. tipoff on Sunday.

The Patriots got off to a quick 8-0 start with a dunk by Milan Szabo, a layup from Patrick Samoura and two baskets by Idaho State transfer Jaxon Edelmayer.

Southwestern Adventist tried to stay within striking distance as Levi Rogers had a putback — his only points of the contest — to make the score 13-7 with 14:14 to play. The Patriots responded with consecutive 3-pointers from Eysan Wiley and Da’Zhon Wyche, and Wiley then finished with a dunk to push the score to 21-7.

With the score at 37-23 with 6:37 remaining in the half, the Patriots went on a 14-0 run and led 51-27 at the break.

Southwestern Adventist got the second half started with two free throws from Justin Lamb before UT Tyler responded with an 11-0 run.

The Patriots continued to extend their lead and used an 18-0 stretch to go up 95-43 with 8:05 to play s Soloman Thomas threw a lob to Paul Djoko for the slam.

The 100th point came with 7:00 on the clock with a floater by Zaire Mateen.

“There was some uneven play,” Wilson said. “People will focus on the scoring, but to us, that’s irrelevant. The reality is, at this stage, you’re looking for progress. We had some progress in the second half I thought over the first half in terms of our defensive focus, not making so many mistakes and allowing shooters to get open on the perimeter like we did in the first half.

“I’m not going to be that coach when your team scores 116 points, and I think we won by 50, but there are a lot of things I would like to see be better. Overall, everybody got to play, and we got everybody on tape. We got an opportunity for us to put people in game situations, and I thought we did a better job in the second half.”

In his first game with the Patriots, Wiley led the way with 20 points.

“We came out with intensity,” Wiley said. “Everything we’ve done at practice, we translated that to the game. There were times we had some lapses. We just have to take the negatives and positives and build on that.”

Thomas scores all of his 18 points in the second half. Mateen and Samoura, who was on the Czech Republic national team in the Olympics, each had 11 points, and Micah Fuller added 10 points.

Edelmayer put in 9 points, and Djoko, Jalen Davis and Trey Davis all had 8 points. Djoko also had eight rebounds and six assists.

Alain Aviles led Southwestern Adventist with 10 points.

The Patriots shot 40 of 78 (51.3 percent) from the field and were 12 of 27 (44.4 percent) from 3-point range. UT Tyler received 79 points from its bench and outscored the Knights 56-20 in the paint.

UT Tyler (1-0) will host Fort Valley State at 7 p.m. Friday.