Last night we took on the mighty St. Thomas Tommies (awful, awful, awful) at Hutton Arena. Coming into the game they were 13-0 and ranked #4 in the country in the latest D3Hoops Top 25 poll. They have a couple of great players in Tyler Nicolai and Alex Healy. Nicolai was Conference Player of the Year last season and Healy was 1st Team All Conference (which seems like the top 95 players in the conference get, but he is very good). They also have a 5th year senior in Teddy Archer who is one of the biggest pests in the conference. A pest, as in, I hate playing against him but I would love to have him on our team. A fourth senior in Anders Halverson starts at the four for them and is uber talented but seems to be the doghouse and plays about 20 minutes a game.
On to the game...
We had a pretty good crowd to start the game, as expected, and our guys really fed off them from the get-go. Tyler knocked down a 3 to start the game and then scoring kept on coming both ways the rest of the half. UST knocked down a bunch of 15 to 17 foot contested jumpers. We were ok with them taking those shots. Those aren't easy at all and we would rather have them take those shots instead of layups. We were clearly running on adrenaline and battling like crazy. As the half wore on, they hit a couple of layups and we were down by as many as seven points the last three minutes of the half. Sam hit a huge 3 right near the buzzer to get us some momentum into the half being down 47-44 after the first 20 minutes.
The second half started much like the first half with a Tyler 3FG that tied the game at 49. We then got a little spurt to push our lead to seven. We played with that lead give or take two points for about six minutes. Every time they made a big play, we answered. Nicolai came up big in the second half and hit four 3's but every time he hit one, we came back with an and one or a 3 of our own. A Nicolai 3 got the game to 77-72 with a little over five minutes to play. We then went on a 7-0 run of our own to essentially put the game out of reach. With 2:04 left and our lead at 15, their coach subbed out their starters and basically gave in. I didn't think that would happen but it certainly helped us breathe a little easier. We finished the game with some subs of our own and came away with a HUGE win, 92-79.
I've honestly never seen a Hamline team just rise to the occasion like we did last night. We had a bunch of guys really step up and we still didn't put two halves together. Tyler Pannell played his tail off and made a bunch of huge 3's and didn't back down once to them. He finished with 17 on 5-7 shooting from 3. Sam Gullickson hit three big 3's in the first half to help keep us in the game. Carl had a big game with 20 points, 15 boards, and 4 blocks. He also didn't commit a foul. A Carl first. Mike Campbell, Levi Wenrich, and Christian "Ainge" Taber rounded out our double figure scorers. Levi played his backside off and really controlled the game. Couldn't have asked anything more from our point guard.
The only issue I had during the game was the consistency of a couple of questionable foul calls. Mike had a breakaway layup in the first half and got taken down hard and it was just deemed a foul. A little later, Levi fouled one of their guys in a similar fashion and was called for an intentional foul. Mike had another breakaway in the second half that he was fouled on and again they called a regular foul. Maybe I'm being biased but none of the fouls were much different than each other. That could've made a difference if the game was closer.
It doesn't get any easier for us as we take on the Knights of Carleton tomorrow night at Hutton. Carleton is coming off a 30 victory over Macalester yesterday. They now stand at 7-2 in the conference.
Also, Carl was named the MIAC Player of the Week for his play last week. Congrats to him, hopefully he stays on the floor more as the season progresses.
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