Augsburg and MAC

We started off the week with a Wednesday game against Augsburg in our first conference game of the season. Augsburg is always a tough matchup because they always play hard and they always have good guards. In the first half we took control of the game and led by five at the half. We should've been up at double figures. We shot the ball over 50% while they shot 26%. The biggest problem was that we had 12 turnovers and only got to the free throw line twice.

In the second half we took control again and got up as many as ten. We had a couple of opportunities to push the lead further but couldn't finish. There seemed to be a couple of calls that could've went either way and both went Augsburg's way. That is certainly the nature of the game though. I believe Augsburg took their first lead of the game with about three minutes to play. We had several opportunities to get the lead back or make a push and just couldn't do it.

Hopefully, we can learn from this game. We did do a good job defensively on their three guards. We held them to 13-39 shooting but they still made some big shots. We also beat them up on the glass by 12 but they got to some loose balls and had some timely offensive rebounds that they kicked out for 3. We held them to 36% shooting and outrebounded them. We still gave them too many second opportunities whether they be loose balls or offensive rebounds. These games are too important for us not to get better at those things.

We had our second conference game against a much improved Macalester team. They lost to St. Mary's by three on Wednesday and we were expecting a good one. The problem with playing a team that was as bad as Macalester was last year is that our guys know that and they have the tendency to take it easy and that definitely happened in the first half. We were down by three at the halftime buzzer after we went on a little run to finish the half. As a coaching staff, we were not happy at all.

The biggest issue was that the guys were playing tight. They didn't want to be the first team in our conference to lose to MAC. We got a good start to the half when Ray Brown got a steal in transition and had a pretty nasty dunk. That got everyone else going and our defensive intensity was sky high. We got a couple more buckets and pushed the lead to ten to fifteen for the rest of the game. Ray led us with 20 points and five boards. Carl Hipp finished with 19 and 7 (season low) while frosh Noah Aguirre had his third straight double figure game with ten to go along with three offensive rebounds. Nick Carroll played a great game with seven assists and two steals. I told him before the game, when he plays well, we do well. Hopefully, he keeps it up.

We have St. Olaf tonight in Northfield and then head up to Moorhead to play the Cobbers on Saturday. This week should be a good test for our boys.