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In a tale of 2 halves, NKU men lose the one they couldn’t afford to as Milwaukee ties them for 1st


By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter

No way they can lose this one, up 20 – 47-27 – at the half. At home. At Homecoming in front of the second-biggest crowd of the season of 4,466 (only the sold-out Cincinnati game drew more). And playing as well as Northern Kentucky’s Norse have all year.

NKU’s Marques Warrick drives the ball on Milwaukee’s Eligah Jamison (Photo by Dale Dawn)

Too much on the line. A chance to put visiting Milwaukee two games behind them in the Horizon League before the Norse have to head out on the road for a February to forget with seven of the final eight games away from home.

Just a thought while we’re on that subject and we know for schools without football, it’s hard to decide when to have Homecoming but maybe it would have been better to do it at the lone home game in February when IUPUI visits and the Norse will be coming home for their lone game at Truist Arena and will need one.

Although the way the second half went, it seemed as if the Norse were the visitors with everything going against them. And the stunned NKU fans could say very little as they watched the Norse get outscored 31-10 the final 13 minutes.

No way they can win this one, with the Norse trailing, 75-70, with 26.1 seconds left, they had to be thinking.

Can’t foul the Panthers, they’d already taken an inexplicable 19 of the 25 second-half free throws between the two teams, finishing the game with 32 (making 27) to NKU’s 15 (making 12).

Think about that for a moment. NKU was up at one time by 23 points, 47-24, right before halftime. And the Norse put an aggressive, physical, full-court-pressing Milwaukee team on the line again and again and again.

“They repeatedly drove the ball on us,” NKU Coach Darrin Horn said, “they were aggressively driving the basketball.” And Northern was playing that matador defense where they waved Milwaukee’s dribblers through – before fouling them.

Trey Robinson hits one of his three three-pointers on his way to an NKY-game-tying 18 points (Photo by Dale Dawn)

There was a 22-2 Milwaukee run over one 5 ½-minute span when the Norse seemed to be more observers than participants, except for the fouling, of course.

“I thought we played as good as we have all year the first half,” Horn said, “and as bad as we’ve played all year the second half.”

Unfortunately for NKU, it was the final 20 minutes that counted more. By a single point, as it turned out.

But not before one more twist.

With the Norse getting buckets from 6-foot-8 senior Chris Brandon, with 16 seconds left, and a steal and score by Marques Warrick with 13.2 left, to make it 75-74, the tune started to change. And then Sam Vinson and Trey Robinson got a tie-up on the inbounds pass and it was Northern’s ball under the Northern basket with 11.2 seconds left.

No way they cannot win this thing now, NKU fans had to saying as they stood and screamed. Plenty of time. And despite what had happened much of the second half, the momentum had finally swung back NKU’s way.

Except for this. The Norse couldn’t get the ball in cleanly and got it back after it was batted out of bounds at halfcourt.

Then Milwaukee took away Warrick for the final shot so the ball rotated to senior Trevon Faulkner, whose long left-handed look got flicked into the air by a Milwaukee defender with a pile-up of players going for it as it came down above the lane with just a couple of seconds left.

In the ensuing scrum for the loose ball, NKU’s Robinson got leveled, lying on the court for a couple of minutes after the horn sounded as the officials ran off, looking down at him as if to say, “Wonder what happened to that guy?

He got clobbered, is what happened, but Horn had it right about how it should have gone. Two things, he thought, having not seen the contact clearly: “They’re probably not calling that,” right before the buzzer.

And then this: “The coach in me says we didn’t need to be in that situation.”

No, they did not.

But here they were. Flattened like Robinson and looking at one of the more puzzling stat sheets ever.

A pair of Milwaukee defenders make life difficult for NKU’s Trevon Faulkner (Photo by Dale Dawn)

For example, the Norse had five players in double figures, led by 18 points each from Brandon, in one of his most active and athletic games that included 17 rebounds and three alley-oop finishes with one a reverse, and Robinson, who knocked down three of Northern’s four three-pointers.

Vinson had had 12 points, Warrick 11 – although on four for 16 shooting including one of nine from three-point range, and Faulkner 10 despite an awful three-point shooting night (eight of 33, 24.2 percent).

Only BJ Freeman, a 6-6 guard from Dodge City CC, one of four transfer starters for Milwaukee, hit double figures with a game-high 23. But 17 of thse came at the free throw line where he was a perfect 17 of 17.

But all 10 Panthers (15-7, 9-3 Horizon League) scored with eight hitting for five or more points. NKU dropped to 9-3 in the Horizon, tying the 14-9 Norse with Milwaukee for first.

“The most disappointing thing is we didn’t respond,” Horn said, to Milwaukee’s second-half run. “I’ve gotta’ find a better way to make our guys respond.”

That’s not all. “We got tight, stopped moving the ball,” Horn said. “We stopped doing the little things.”

Stopped getting the loose rebounds, the 50-50 balls the way they did in the first half.

And now NKU has a second-one-point Horizon League home loss (also 64-63 to Oakland three weeks ago). And a collapse that recalls the Wright State debacle in the Horizon championship game that would have sent NKU to the NCAA Tournament last March.

It was simply a case of “hoping it goes good,” Horn said of his team that got tentative and tight “rather than making it go good.”

And it went bad, very bad.

Now the Norse head off on the road, going to Pittsburgh for Robert Morris on Thursday and then over to Youngstown State Saturday.

BOX SCORE
MILWAUKEE 27 48—75
NORTHERN KENTUCKY 47 27–74
MILWAUKEE (15-7, 9-3 Horizon): Rand 2-0-2-5, Browning 2-2-0-6, Jamison 2-0-1-5, Freeman 3-0-17-23, Pullian 0-0-2-2, Johnson 2-0-0-4, Thomas 2-0-2-6, Bol 1-0-3-5, Howell 3-0-1-7, Baker 3-0-1-7, Stuart 2-0-1-5, TOTALS: 25-4-27-75.
NORTHERN KENTUCKY: Brandon 9-0-0-18, Robinson 5-3-5-18, Vinson 3-2-4-12, Warrick 4-1-2-11, Rhodes 2-1-0-5, Faulkner 4-1-1-10, Sumler 0-0-0-0, Zorgvol 0-0-0-0, Wells 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 27-8-12-74.


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