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JAN.
29 — Leafs Hang On, Beat Marian In Indianapolis
Goshen
stays one step ahead of Knights in final 15 minutes for
67-59 win |
Indianapolis, IN — With the Mid-Central
Conference race seemingly getting tighter by the minute these
days, the Goshen College men’s basketball team picked up an enormous
67-59 win at Marian College Saturday, keeping the team in a
tie for third place within league standings. Behind a solid second-half
performance,
the Leafs were able to thwart Marian’s push to grab a lead for
the final 15 and a half minutes of play, giving the Knights
a retribution of sorts: Marian dealt Goshen its only home loss
of the season to date, a 67-75 setback on Dec. 4.
“What an important game this was for us to get,” said Stan
Daugherty, Goshen head coach. “It wasn’t always pretty,
but sometimes on the road in this conference you just have to grind
it out. I thought
we battled very hard and had good intensity throughout. We put
ourselves in a position to win and came up with a big one.”
With four teams tied for third place in the conference heading
into Saturday — and all four teams playing one another — the
Leafs’ game at Marian carried extra magnitude. The wining team would
remain in a two-way tie for third in the MCC. The losing team
would drop all the way to a two-squad dead heat for sixth-place.
Early on Saturday, it appeared that Goshen (17-8, 6-5) might
be in for a long afternoon following the three-hour bus ride
to Indianapolis. An early 11-7 Leafs’ lead was short-lived, as Marian
put together an 18 to nine run to grab a 25-20 lead with just
under five minutes
remaining in the first half. With the help of four offensive
rebounds in the last
4:27 of the period, however, Goshen was able to go on a run of
its own, outscoring Marian by an 11 to four count to take a 31-29
lead at the break.
The opening five minutes of the second half kept the game close,
as Marian took a three-point lead at the 17 minute-mark before junior
Tyler Sheerer buried an equalizer just moments later to tie the game (for
the eighth time) at 38-38. After Marian came up empty on its next possession,
junior Eric Walsh was able to score a jumper in the lane, giving the Leafs
a 40-38 lead. The ninth lead change of the contest was the final one,
as Goshen would not give up its ground. Marian would tie the game on two
more occasions — at the 7:18 mark and at the 5:44 clip — but
would not break all the way through. Goshen made several big plays down
the stretch, slowly building its lead to nine points in the final minute
of play to secure the ever-important victory.
“I thought that we seemed to pick up our energy level in the last
seven or eight minutes of the game, and I thought that was the
difference,” Daugherty
said. “If fatigue is ever going to be a factor, it’s going
to happen around that time. I thought we actually increased our
effort, and we made some big plays as a result.”
After Marian tied the score at 54-54 with 5:44 remaining in the
game, Daugherty’s team put together a nine to nothing run, holding
Marian scoreless until just 59 seconds remained in the game. During that
time, the Leafs got scores from four different players, symbolic of Goshen’s
team balance throughout the game. (Walsh charted a team-leading 18 points,
while senior Paul Kopanski added 14 and junior Jordan Buller 11. Sophomore
David Haire tallied nine points.)
For the game, Goshen connected on 24 of 53 attempts from the
floor (45.3 percent), including a very respectable 13 for 24 effort (54.2
percent) in the second half. Meanwhile, Marian hit on only 23 of 60 attempts
(38.3 percent), and found the going difficult from the three-point line
(making just seven of 23, 30.4 percent).
“I thought we could win this game if we could stay close enough
to make a move at the end,” Daugherty said. “We were able
to do that, and then we played our best basketball in the last
minutes. This is a big one for us, but there still is a lot of
basketball to be
played. A lot can change over the course of three weeks, and
our goal is to continue to improve both individually and as a
team.”
Goshen will return to the Roman Gingerich Center on Tuesday night,
when a dangerous Indiana Wesleyan University team comes to visit. Game
time is set for 7 p.m. |
  Junior
Eric Walsh
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