vs. Carleton 1/4/12

Last night we took on the Carleton Knights (I'll live with that nickname) in their West Gym. The West Gym has been a house of horrors for us over the years. We have never really shot the ball there and didn't help that Carleton has had some really good players coming through those doors in Jeremy Sutherland and Seth Jonker. Definitely excited not to see those guys anymore. They still have some very good players and are very dangerous. Going into last night's game they hadn't shot the ball well and that was definitely scary.

One of the first couple of possessions into the game one of the better players, Taylor Hanson, went down in what seemed like a serious knee injury. You never want to see someone go down with an injury especially one that is a great kid, like Taylor is. From my perspective, which can be a little fuzzy, it looked like he just landed on it wrong and it was a "non-contact" injury. I hope he is doing ok.

We didn't exactly light the world on fire from the get-go but as the half progressed we started to create some turnovers and get some easy baskets, which always gets us going. Victor Easter led the charge with a bunch of steals and I think he even had a career high in points in the first half all off of Carleton's turnovers. We had another little burst with our starters back that got our lead into double digits and then we dropped the hammer. Sam Gullickson, who hadn't shot the ball well all year (1-18 from 3) hit four straight 3's and we never really looked back. We were up 51-36 at the half while shooting 68% from the floor and 8-13 from 3. First time since the Crookston exhibition game that we've shot lights out.

The second half was more of a back and forth game as we extended the lead to as many as 23 and I don't think they got closer than 15. The guys played with a lot of energy and it looked like the Knights wore down quite a bit as their legs weren't exactly into their shots. It's not easy to play over 35 minutes in a game with the way that we pressured last night. We ended up defeating the Knights 92-72.

As for the end of the game. We told our players not to shoot as the shot clock and game clock had a 0.7 differential and there is no need to shoot when we were up as many as we were. Well, we shot and it went in. Not exactly the way we wanted to finish the game.  We told them not to shoot and our one guy didn't listen. It happened and we apologized to the Carleton coaches afterward.

I want to thank our women's hockey coach, Steve Debus, for coming to the game last night. He came with his kids and even one of his kids really liked it. Although, Coach Debus said, "He'll never play basketball."