Over the past couple of years, our games with Carleton have been really good ones. It's essentially a battle of two different styles. They want to slow the ball down and the their stuff and we want to get it out in transition and take advantage of our athleticism. They knocked us out the conference tournament last season, so we are hoping for a little revenge.
The games started with a little back and forth action. We ended up taking a four to seven point lead throughout most of the first half. We were getting great catches inside with Carl Hipp and Andy Voigt. They were getting catches really deep in the post and basically just turning and shooting before a double team could get there. Those guys will need to do that more often for us to be successful throughout the season. The scored ended up being tied at the half, 26-26 after some timely 3's by Tom Sawatzke and Jeremy Sutherland. We were led by Brandon Rieg's 10 points.
The second half started off pretty even and then Carleton started gradually pulling away after our lack of defensive rebounding. It's embarassing to watch our guys not want the ball. Last season, we dominated the boards and this year we are getting killed. Is it strength? Is it wanting it more? Is it size and athleticism? I think we are flat out being soft. We can't expect teams to fall back to defense instead of crashing. Scott Theisen had a career high of 10 boards, four of them offensive against us. His previous high was six. Not acceptable at all.
Though Carleton never really pulled away, we couldn't string together enough baskets to get it closer than three down the stretch. They made their free throws down the stretch after missing a bunch early while we shot 8-15 in the second half from the line. They had four offensive boards off of free throws and capitalized on every one of them. We missed probably four to six layups in the second half. We got outrebounded by 15. We lose 62-56. Hmmmmmmm. All things that we can fix and take care of. No way we should've lost that game.
On a positive note, we held them to 36% shooting from the floor and 27% from 3. Former player Nick Carroll said that he thought that was the best he had ever seen us defend against Carleton. It was just a very frustrating loss to take. My hairline creeped back a little more than I would've like as well.
On a funny side. Coach Whitmore ripped the hell out of his pants in the first half. No one noticed it until halftime when Victor Easter said something to him after his halftime speech. It wasn't just a little rip either. His pants split basically from the middle of his butt to his crotch, probably a six inch rip. He ended up coaching the second half in a warmup suit. That'll be a story for us to tell for a long time.
We play our first home game of the year on Monday vs. St. John's. They are playing really well right now and I believe are 5-1 with their only loss coming to UW-Stevens Point. We also play Augsburg at home on Wednesday and then St. Thomas on Saturday as we put up the Row of Honor in Hutton Arena at 1pm and we play at 3pm.
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