Central men’s basketball comeback stalls in OT
PELLA—A spirited comeback was undone by mistakes down the stretch as the Central College men’s basketball team dropped its season opener to Bethany Lutheran College (Minn.) 77-67 in overtime.
Coach Craig Douma could point to numerous ways this one slipped away. The Dutch made just 15 of 32 free throws, shot an icy 4-of-22 from 3-point range while hitting only 32.4% from the field overall and committed an unsightly 26 turnovers.
Yet he blamed himself. With Central up 66-63 in the closing seconds of regulation, Bethany Lutheran’s Justin Schrupp drained an off-balance, contested 3-point basket with 2 seconds left to force overtime.
“That’s on me,” Douma insisted. “We needed to foul there. That’s my fault.”
Bethany Lutheran (1-0) was up 35-24 at halftime and led by as many as 14 at 46-32 with 14:00 left in the game. But an 8-0 scoring run capped by a pair of Sam Beatty (junior, Mount Pleasant) buckets to cut it to 46-40 with 12:26 left. Central was still down 55-46 at the 7-minute mark before finally taking a 59-57 lead on a 3-point bucket by guard Drew Edwards (junior, Eden Prairie, Minn.). Still up 62-60 with 2:00 left, the Dutch had a chance to seemingly put the game away but missed five consecutive free throws.
“We’ve got to become a better offensive team,” Douma said. “And our spacing has to get better. But you can’t win a game with 26 turnovers and you can’t win a game missing 16 free throws.”
Nonetheless, Central almost did.
“We’ve been talking a lot about defense and rebounding and those are the two things we did well,” Douma said. “We really played pretty good defense tonight overall. And we rebounded the heck out of the ball. We’re a good rebounding team.”
The Dutch limited Bethany Lutheran to 39.0% shooting and held a commanding 64-44 advantage on the glass.
Beatty had a double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds while Kole Tupa (sophomore, Center Point, Center Point-Urbana HS) had 11 points and center Joshua Van Gorp (sophomore, Pella, Pella Christian HS) also recorded a double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds while forward Caden Mauck (5th-year, Kansas City, Mo., Blue Springs South HS) had 10 points and seven rebounds.
“It’s a young team,” Douma said. “We’ve got a lot of new guys playing and we’re trying to get that figured out.”
Central is home again Wednesday for a non-conference game with Waldorf College. Game time is 7 p.m. at P.H. Kuyper Gymnasium. Waldorf is 1-2 after defeating Hastings College (Neb.) 89-82 Saturday.
“They’re athletic and they’re big,” Douma said.
His main focus is on his own squad, however.
“We’ll get better,” he said. “We’ll come out and get to work on Monday.”
