Valley City holds off late charge from DWU men

Nov. 9—MITCHELL — The Dakota Wesleyan University men’s basketball team dug itself a big hole in the second half on Saturday evening at the Corn Palace, and then nearly escaped with a victory.

But it was visiting Valley City State (N.D.) that left with the joy of victory, a 78-76 win capped by Lamar Grayson’s floater in the lane with 5 seconds remaining for a non-conference win.

The Tigers had the ball in the frontcourt with 2.2 seconds remaining but could not complete the inbounds pass. Jayden Patcha was fouled and made 1-of-2 free throws and a last-gasp effort with a half-second remaining came up short for DWU to win the game, suffering the Tigers’ first loss of the season.

Transfer guard Tampa Scott IV appeared set to be the hero for the Tigers late, making a shot with 1:09 remaining to pull DWU to within two points and then hitting a 3-pointer for the lead with 19 seconds left after a DWU steal for the Tigers’ first lead of the second half. But the Vikings’ ensuing possession ended with Grayson hitting a shot off the glass from about 8 feet out to have VCSU retake the lead.

“I wasn’t really happy with our defense you know in terms of our concepts, not so much against VCSU specifically,” DWU coach Kevin Williamson said. “We probably had too many breakdowns and communication errors that led to them getting too many easy looks or clean looks and gameplan things that we were trying to take away and we didn’t because of our own communication issues. Those are things we got to clean up.”

Williamson said he told the team after the game that the contest was lost in the first 10 minutes of the second half, when DWU saw a 40-all halftime score tip in favor of the Vikings at 60-45 over the first 9 minutes in the half.

“We just got away from getting paint touches and getting downhill and we just settled for a bunch of bad early open threes and played kind of into their hands,” Williamson said.

The Tigers got back into the game with a few adjustments and changes. Junior wing Anthony…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/valley-city-holds-off-charge-045900647.html

Author : The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D.

Publish date : 2024-11-10 04:59:00

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