Sunday, January 09, 2005

Falcons 3-0 in MAC, Beat NIU

Its fun at Anderson Arena again this season. The team had a somewhat rough, uneven performance, but a win nonetheless over an NIU team ranked close to them in the Sagarin ratings.

Coach Dakich said on his post-game show that he looks at this team as a 14-17 team trying to get back to playing winning basketball. That's the same way I feel...each win gives me a little more confidence, but we still have to show we're not going to slide back again.

No one scored today for the first three minutes or so, but then we had a 9-4 lead which we stretched to 20-9 by 11:29 left in the first. The lead got as high as 30-16 (6:18) before NIU started a little run. With :19 left in the first, James Hughes scored on their fourth attempt at the hoop for that trip to cut it to 6. That could have been a big momentum shift on the other end, but Josh Almanson drained a jumper at the buzzer, and we went in up 8.

In the second half, we bolted to a 15 point lead in the first 5 minutes, and it got to 18 with 10:00 left. Obviously, things were well in hand. There was one more key play. NIU had hacked back to 8 down with 2:05 left, and the shot clock was running down on our end of the floor. Josh Almanson took the ball and lofted a jumper over a defender from about ten feet out, and the ball went in the hoop as the buzzer sounded. He misses, and NIU can hit a 3 and be down 5, but instead they're down 10 and its all over.

We continued to shoot well, at 50.9%. We hit all 15 Ft's, and had a season-low 12 turnovers. NIU shot better than we would hope (49.1%), but shot only 9 FT's.

Reimold and Almanson each had 21 points. John was 5-7 from three range--I can't wait to check the national stats. He has to be in the top five in the country in three point shooting. Almanson was 9 of 16 from the field as well. He also grabbed 7 boards. Mawel Soler contributed 23 very solid minutes (10p/7r) when we needed it, including a trey! Mawel is a great addition to this club, and has helped round the team out a great deal. We basically ran a seven man rotation, with Cory Eyink getting 12 minutes.

Big week coming up. We're at Eastern on Wednesday, and then have WMU at Anderson on Saturday. Let's hope for a big crowd and a big win. This is another opportunity to prove we're not just a 14-17 team.

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