Yesterday afternoon we took on the Cardinals of St. Mary's down in Winona. Their gym has been a house of horrors for us the last couple of seasons. We always seem to come out flat to start, something that we've seen in our loses this season. We followed the women's team big win and they now move into sole possession of 7th place, a full game behind St. Mary's for the final playoff spot. They do have the tiebreaker with the Cardinals due to their season sweep.
As I stated above, we rarely win games when we start out awful. Well, we started out flat and just looked deflated right from the get go. It was quickly turning into the usual house of horrors. We just didn't come to play, we were down 27-12 with about seven minutes left in the half. Needless to say, history was repeating itself. We got stagnant on offense again and when we did move we were going one on one and that clearly isn't our game as previous games have shown. We got a little lift over the last five minutes of the half as our defensive intensity ramped up a bit and we finally got a couple of scores including a near buzzer beating 3 by B Rieg to cut the lead to seven at the half. Josh Pratt made a great pass to B to give us a little momentum going into the locker room. Halftime score, 35-28 in favor of the Cardinals.
The second half started with a lot of defensive intensity as we got right back into it tying the ballgame two and a half minutes into the half. From that point on, it was a back and forth battle with neither team neither team getting more than a six point lead. It seemed like every time we made a run, they would slowly chip away at it and tie the game. We never gave in though. We kept on battling and got to were we wanted to be and that's with the lead down the stretch. We made some plays and that's exactly what you need to do in close games. One play that comes to mind was when Danny Ainge made a great move for a two shot foul, made the first, missed the second. Sam Gullickson made a great tip on the miss to Ainge for an and one layup. We went from down two to up two in just a couple of seconds. Even though we didn't knock down as many free throws over the last minute as we should of, we made enough to keep it a two possession game the whole time. We ended with a 68-66 hard fought win.
We were led by Carl's 19 and 9. 14 of those points came in the 2nd half. Mike his first career double double with 14 and 10 (another career high). Both of these guys stepped up in the 2nd half with their play and rebounding. To shoot 39% from the floor and 3-16 from 3 and still grind out a victory on the road tells us something about our team. We are starting to get the "me against the world" attitude which I like. I would like to see that attitude for all 40 minutes.
We now stand at 12-8 overall and 10-5 in the conference. We are now officially in 3rd place 1/2 game ahead of both Gustavus and St. Olaf (hottest team in the conference right now). We have a game on Wednesday at Bethel and return to Hutton Arena for Saturday matinee with Macalester. Two huge games for us. I believe that if we win both, we clinch a playoff berth. We just have to take care of our own stuff. We can't worry about what other teams are doing at this point. Five games left in the conference and all of them are HUGE.
Question of the day, If there was one college player that you would start a program with, who would it be (I'm talking D1 folks)?
No comments:
Post a Comment