William Penn Drops Top-25 Road Contest

William Penn University Athletics

William Penn University Athletics

Olathe, Kan.–The Statesmen men’s basketball team is not currently at full strength and unfortunately it could not slow down streaking MidAmerica Nazarene in an 87-78 Heart of America Athletic Conference loss Saturday.

#7 William Penn (19-5, 12-4 Heart) lost to the 20th-ranked Pioneers (18-6, 12-4 Heart) to drop into a three-way tie atop the league standings with MNU and #17 Peru State. WPU has potentially the easiest of the three remaining schedules, though, as the Pioneers, winners of nine in a row, and the Bobcats still have to play each other next Wednesday. The Statesmen, on the other hand, return to Oskaloosa Wednesday to host Culver-Stockton (Mo.) at 7:30 p.m.

The visitors started well, leading 8-2 in the first two minutes of play. They remained on top until MidAmerica Nazarene took the advantage for good at 17-16. The score was still close at 34-33, but the hosts scored nine of the last 10 points of the half to go up 43-34 at intermission.

Each side produced a few runs in the latter period with the last narrowing WPU’s deficit from 15 to two at 70-68 with 5:01 remaining. Kevin Smith (Jr., Baltimore, Md., Physical Education) did much of his team’s work to get the Statesmen back into the contest. The junior entered the day averaging just 2.8 points, but went off for 19 in the second half (game-high 21 total). Smith was 8-for-15 off the bench, including making a pair of three-pointers.

Unfortunately, the waning minutes were dominated by MNU as it went on a 13-3 run to ice the victory. William Penn was outshot 44.6%-40.3%, but warmed up to 51.4% after intermission. The squad also lost the rebounding battle 43-41 and committed five more turnovers (19-14). The navy and gold stayed close, however, by making one more three-pointer (6-5) and shooting much better at the charity stripe (18-for-25, while the Pioneers were 11-for-24).

Brady Burford (Sr., Chicago, Ill., Physical Education) matched Smith with 21 points (both players also had seven rebounds), while Steven Roundtree (Sr., Jacksonville, Fla., Physical Education) also reached double figures with 15 points in addition to five steals. Roundtree was not a factor at the end as he fouled out soon after WPU narrowed the margin to two late in the game.

Charles Knowles (Jr., Chicago, Ill., Physical Education) hit a game-best three trifectas en route to nine points and Josh Caldwell (Sr., Denver, Colo., Physical Education) added eight.

“We did not handle adversity very well in the first half,” Head Coach John Henry said. “We needed to be a team and for parts of this game we were not. You cannot beat teams like this without being on the same page as a unit.”

Posted by on Feb 8 2016. Filed under College Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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