Poor half leads to demise as Broncos fall, 65-47

By Phill Swanson

(Robert Youngs / Western Herald) WMU head coach Steve Hawkins talks with an official during Saturday’s game against Kent State. Both coaching staffs donned sneakers in support of Coaches vs. Cancer weekend.

Western Herald

Two different Western Michigan University men’s basketball teams showed up Saturday at University Arena.
One team started slow, but amassed a 17-6 lead with seven minutes to go in the first half. The other team finished the half with a one-point deficit and never regained the lead, losing 65-47 to Kent State University (10-11, 3-4).

“Coach talked about that after the game, when we had them up 10 early and didn’t deliver the knockout blow, which we’ve been preaching for weeks now,” junior guard David Kool said. “We’ve just got to learn how to do that. Against a great team like Kent State, with those guards, they got hot in a hurry. They made a lot of plays and it was just a snowball effect from there on and we couldn’t stop them.

For the first 13 minutes of the game the Broncos (7-13, 4-3 Mid-American Conference) had KSU in a stand still. KSU was 0-for-8 from the field until Chris Singletary made a layup nine minutes into the game. Senior guard and KSU’s leading scorer, Al Fisher, mustered a measly five points in the first half.

“The first 10 minutes, we resembled a really bad soccer team,” Kent State head coach Geno Ford said. “We got a few shots on goal and never scored and they guarded well.”

Each team finished the half with three assists to 10 turnovers, but KSU escaped with a one-point lead, 21-20, and momentum.

“After the first half we played, we felt kind of confident going into the second half, because we felt we didn’t play that well in the first half,” Kool said. “[We were] kind of sluggish offensively, but we played well defensively and that kept us in the game. So we came out second half thinking we were going to start a new game, new attitude and we just didn’t come out and play hard.”

The Golden Flashes took advantage of the sluggish Broncos. Kent State’s front court pressured WMU with its speed, jumping in front of passing lanes and disrupting anything resembling offensive rhythm.

“I thought that the big difference here today was the guard play,” Bronco head coach Steve Hawkins said. “Their guards just dominated the last 30 minutes of the game with their energy. After they got to playing with confidence, we really had problems. We couldn’t get ourselves into anything.”

The Broncos offensive woes turned into KSU buckets. In the first five minutes of the second half, WMU turned the ball over four times, 17 total for the game, to spur a 7-0 Kent State run. The Broncos would not get any closer than seven points for the rest of the night.

“We wanted to play the game from the inside out, but as we started to drive the basketball, I thought they did a good job of not just helping, but attacking the ball, and that created a lot of turnovers,” Hawkins said.
Kent State won numerous battles. They scored 12 more points in the paint than WMU, had three times as many points off turnovers, and tripled the Broncos bench points with 24. The only Bronco in double digits was Kool, while Kent State had four players. Even the loose balls went Kent State’s way.

“There were a lot of possessions where there were broken plays and we run something, the ball gets stripped and ends up bouncing in a free area and it just always fell into our guys hands,” Geno said. “That’s the best we’ve played all year, and sometimes you generate your own breaks to a degree. But we were fortunate a lot of balls just bounced to where we were and we were able to make some easy layups off what would have been a nothing trip. They missed a lot of really good looks.”

Despite the disappointing effort, Kool’s confidence in his team remains.

“I don’t think it does much,” Kool said. “I think it’s a game we’re going to have to learn from, honestly, learn from our mistakes, but we’re going to have to put it behind us. It’s one of those where you can’t get it back now and we can’t let this affect the next one.”

With a MAC West race shaping up to be closer than a photo finish, Wednesday’s game at Bowling Green State University is nearly a must win.

“There is no time for negativity,” Hawkins said. “This is absolutely no time for negativity. We’re in the middle of a race. Ball State won [Saturday], so we’re right in the middle of the race here. You’ve got to get hungry and go back out on the road and pick up road wins where you picked up a couple of home losses.”

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Feb 1 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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