Buena Vista 11/28

Saturday night we traveled down to East Jesus, Iowa. That's not really the name but it might as well have been. Buena Vista is in the middle of nowhere. It's a decent town with a great campus, right on a lake, but it couldn't be further from civilization. It was about a four and a half hour drive from St. Paul. Our hotel was on the "outskirts" of town and they told us that the hot water heater was down and it didn't look like we would get hot water. Great start to our stay.

The game got off to a decent start for both teams. We initially didn't have an answer for their bigs as they started 6'6" and 6'6" for their 4's and 5's. We are definitely smaller but at the same time, much more athletic. Midway through the first, we went on a 12-0 run with our defensive intensity. It was exactly what we have talked about with our team. Create a tempo that the other team can't keep up with. The problem with that is, we can also give up those types of runs. We gave up an 11-0 run almost immediately after that. The rest of the half was played pretty even and we ended up up one 39-38 at the horn. According to the stats, we had 19 points off of BV's turnovers. That's a stat we can definitely take pride in. We also gave up 13 offensive rebounds. Not exactly something to be proud of.

The second half started off with a bunch of back and forth action as we gradually extended our lead to seven points throughout the middle part of the half. We essentially kept the game anywhere from a four point lead to a nine point lead the rest of the game. We took away a few of their offensive rebounds and "held" them to nine in the second half. Not exactly what we wanted but we'll take the win. We forced them into 23 turnovers, which I believe is highly uncharacteristic for them (they do have a freshman point guard). We were led by Mike Campbell's 24 points on 8-11 shooting and 8-9 from the line. Noah Aguirre had 15 on 5-7 shooting including 2-4 from 3. Carl Hipp finished with 14 and 8, while Tyler Pannell had 12 on 4-6 shooting from 3 in his first collegiate start.

In case you were wondering where Jordan Schmidt was (he wasn't in the box score). He is back in Chicago dealing with an infection. He is supposed to see the doctor today. Not exactly sure if or when he will return.

We play Carleton on Wednesday in our first MIAC game of the season. They ended our season last year in the MIAC Playoffs and ended up winning the conference tournament. They lost to UW-Stevens Point in the first round of the NCAA tournament and Stevens Point ended up winning the whole thing. The Knights are 0-3 right now but have played two D2 teams out in Hawaii over the weekend, so I'm expecting a good one. HERE is the link to video and everything else for the game.