@ Bethel 2/9

Last night we took on the Royals of Bethel. The Pipers haven't lost in the Robertson Center since Nelson took over. We always seem to shoot well there for some reason. Before our game, the JV team from Bethel took on the University of Minnesota's Club basketball team. It was an entertaining game to watch with the Royals, or should be call them the Navyies (their color is navy blue not royal blue), won in a nail biter. Today's game marks the return of Jordan Schmidt. He had been out for a really long stretch of games due to a freak injury. He had been practicing with us for a couple of days and he certainly had some fresh legs.

The game didn't exactly start the way we wanted as we turned the ball over and then committed an intentional foul. I'm not saying it wasn't intentional but I wonder if we will get an intentional call our way sometime this year. After coming to our senses we started a 7-0 run with a Carl dunk. We seemed to be really rolling, as we got the ball to Carl anytime we wanted. After replacing the starters, we started to get our rears kicked on the offensive glass, a trend that continued throughout the whole game. We went back and forth for a bit and then we attacked a little better and got our lead to eight at the half, 45-37.

The second half started like the first, minus the intentional, and Bethel got off to a hot start. Not sure what was going on with our energy tonight but we definitely played defense in spurts. As the half wore on, we wore then down. We started making inside out 3's, Carl was dominating inside, and we were getting stops. We got up as many as 19 on three different occasions in the second. The game was never really in doubt at that point. Our guys were playing really loose but it didn't seem that Bethel wanted to be in the gym anymore. They ended up clawing back to 12 points but it seemed like everytime they scored, we went right back at them. A defensive struggle to say the least. Final score, 91-77 in favor of the Pipers.

We were led by Carl's 26 and 7. Tyler finished with 11 in front of his parents, who surprised him with a visit from Portland. Mike was our other double figure scorer with 10. We also had five guys between 5-7 points to help our balanced attack. We got killed on the boards and only had 18 rebounds total. That is just unacceptable. We gave up as many offensive boards as we had defensive boards. That is something we clearly have to fix to win down the stretch. We are now 13-8 overall and 11-5 in the conference.

We play at home vs. Macalester on Saturday at 3pm. Before our game, we will be doing the Row of Honor ceremony for Hamline's all time greats. Should be a great atmosphere. Ceremony starts at 1pm.

Congrats to Carl on being named to the D3Hoops.com Team of the Week for the 2nd time this season.