On a beautiful Valentine's Day (so naturally our school's male population was not at the game because they were trying to impress their "lady friend")we took on the Oles from St. Olaf in a rematch of the classic defensive struggle that took place a month ago in Northfield. Both teams were riding impressive win streaks, one had to come to an end.
Game didn't exactly start the way we want just like the last time we played them. We missed a couple of chippy layups as well as a couple of good looks from three. We were very stagnant on the offensive end and they were making our defense look like the Red Sea (great fan video on that link). We couldn't muster any type of offense and we were close to a season low in points at the half with 23. We had 12 turnovers and gave up 10 offensive rebounds. Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me (or anyone for that matter). We were down 31-23 at the half.
Second half started much like the first. We couldn't get anything going. Our offense looked like we just put it in yesterday. Not exactly our best showing to say the least. Throughout the half, we would get the lead down to 7 at the most and could never muster anything more than that. Olaf always had an answer.
With about five minutes to play Nelson decided we needed to play "small ball." Our group was Victor Easter, Jordan Schmidt, Mike Campbell, Christian Taber, and Noah Aguirre. Christian aka Ainge made a couple of 3's to get us right back in it and we started to apply a bunch of defensive pressure and increased the tempo of the game tenfold. Noah made a couple of HUGE 3's and we were right back in the mix as Olaf was on their heels. Noah made another gigantic 3 with 28 seconds left to tie the game. Olaf had the ball and called a timeout after they got past halfcourt. They set up a play and ended up taking an off balance shot that we rebounded and immediately called a timeout. Our ball with a little over six seconds left. We inbound the ball and get caught up a little and end up taking an off balance 3 for the win and it bounces off the rim.
Overtime, a place we have been at several times this season and we definitely looked a little more comfortable. We moved Carl back into the lineup and mix and matched with some other guys. The guys got the ball moving quite a bit and we looked like a totally different team as we attacked and got to the line quite a bit. We fouled out their two starting guards, which forced them to put a couple of guys into the game that hadn't play a ton of minutes in the second half. We ended up going 13-16 from the line in overtime and stole a victory from the Oles.
The energy and aggressiveness we had in the last five minutes of the game was phenomenal. It was definitely something that we have preached with our guys since the day we got here. We are going to play a lot of players and down the stretch of games we are going to wear teams down and dominate those last five minutes and we did yesterday. Big props to Jordan Schmidt and Victor Easter to give us that spark as they create havoc on the defensive end and really got into the paint on penetration on the offensive end.
We were led last night by Mike's 18 points and 5 boards. Noah had a huge second half, scoring all of his points there with 12. He also had 7 boards, 4 assists, and 4 steals, one of which sealed the win. Carl had 14 points including a layup that put us in front in overtime. On that layup he hit the 1500 point mark for his career. We also tough minutes from Victor, as he had a career high 7 points. B Rieg had 7 points and 7 boards, not bad for being like 5'3". Andy didn't get a ton of minutes but still came through with 7 points.
With the win last night we clinched at least a home game for the MIAC playoffs. Not sure the last time that has happened at Hamline but we're excited. But we aren't done yet. We take on the Tommies from St. Thomas tomorrow night at 7:30 central time at their new gym.
Here is the LINK for the game tomorrow. I've never been able to figure out the stuff on that website but go for it.
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