By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Mixed weekend for Northern Kentucky college basketball teams as Thomas More finishes up the regular season and NKU is just a week away.
But maybe not the way you might have thought.
The road warrior NKU men pulled off a Friday win at Purdue Fort Wayne and defied a CBSsports.com pundit before battling for sole possession of second place Sunday in the Horizon League with Cleveland State.
And Thomas More? Well the Saints’ men and women, at one time both an unprecedented No. 1 in the nation in the NAIA, lost a Mid-South Conference doubleheader at Pikeville to close out the regular season. Hard to remember the last time that happened.
NKU GETS BIG ROAD JUMP, THEN FALLS JUST SHORT
(From NKU Athletics)
First the good news from the Norse, news that went against the prediction of Tom Fornelli, the daily CBSports.com PM Edition columnist, who singled out the NKU game as the hot betting pick from a thin Friday national college schedule.
“That’s right; we’re leading the newsletter with a Horizon League battle between Purdue Fort Wayne and Northern Kentucky,” Fornelli wrote. “What do you expect? There’s no NBA tonight as we’ve reached the All-Star break, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an NHL bet right in this newsletter, so our options are minimal. Knowing that, how could we resist a home dog in a Horizon League matchup tonight? It’s a home dog! In the Horizon League! Principle!”
So Tom picked the three-point underdog Mastodons. He explained: “Northern Kentucky has been the much stronger team in conference play, but it has struggled on the road, and it’s really struggled against the spread. The Norse are only 8-17 ATS this season, including a mark of 2-6 ATS on the road. They’ve also lost two straight on the road and are 3-8 overall on the road or at neutral sites compared to 13-3 at home.
“Considering the drop-off in performance, it isn’t easy to trust them as a road favorite. When you factor in the numbers suggesting Purdue Fort Wayne should be a slight favorite tonight, well, the Mastodons only look more attractive.”
Although how attractive a Mastodon can look is a point for debate as NKU took over the ESPN+ game and didn’t let go in a relatively comfortable 63-50 win led by Marques Warrick’s 22 points as the lone Norse in double digits for a 17-11 NKU team that improved to 12-5 in the Horizon and into a tie with Cleveland State for second place in the conference.
Big edge in this one for the Norse, who finish up as has been reported so often, with seven of their eight February games on the road, was defense. NKU limited the Mastodons to 35.3 percent shooting on 18 of 51 from the field. Hard to lose a game when your opponent scores just 50 points.
Senior Chris Brandon’s game-high 13 rebounds helped NKU to a decisive 36-27 edge on the boards.
The win moved NKU into a second-place tie with a Cleveland State team NKU would face Sunday in Cleveland after edging CSU 57-56 at Highland Heights earlier on a Warrick buzzer-beating three.
As it turned out, the Norse did hit another three just before the horn Sunday, as Sam Vinson fired one in from 28 feet with .5 seconds left, but that left NKU short by a point this time, 64-63, as the Vikings took over the second spot all alone and NKU (17-12 overall) fell into a tie with Milwaukee at 12-6 in the league.
As on Friday, Warrick was the lone Norse in double figures with a game-high 26 points. And off the bench, 7-foot freshman Iman Zorgvol led the Norse with nine rebounds.
All that playing time was a result of senior big man Brandon, a top 20 national rebounder, having been limited to 17 minutes of action with foul trouble as NKU lost the battle of the boards, 42-31.
“It’s going to be really hard for us to win if Chris Brandon plays just 17 minutes,” NKU Coach Darrin Horn said in his postgame radio interview. “But I’m really proud of our guys. I thought they fought hard all the way.”
If Horn could have asked for a do-over, it would have been a pair of late opportunities when NKU got no points. “We didn’t finish those two late transition plays,” Horn said, “you’ve got to finish those.”
With two evenly matched teams, you do. Northern gets another up-north opportunity this weekend in the Detroit area, facing Detroit Mercy Thursday and Oakland Saturday. Back in January, Northern beat Detroit Mercy, 78-76, in overtime and lost to Oakland, 64-63, both at home.
Adding to the intrigue of this week’s Detroit Mercy game is that Titan senior Antoine Davis is closing in on Pete Maravich’s NCAA career scoring record. Davis had 29 points in the first game between the teams.
TMU DROPS A DOUBLE-DIP AT PIKEVILLE
How long has it been since anyone has written that headline. And while the 16th-ranked TMU men, with short roster, have been struggling, for the still No. 1 NAIA women, it’s a bit of a shocker, this second MSC loss in a 26-2 season.
(Photo from TMU)
With 16 second-half points on her way to a game-high 27, senior Zoie Barth did about all she could for the Saints who just could not close down the 25th-ranked NAIA Bears in a 71-68 Thomas More loss. Big difference in this game: TMU hit just 27.8 percent from three-point range (five of 18) while Pikeville hit on 38.5 percent of its threes.
Hard for the smaller Saints to beat good teams without their long-range shooting. Overall, the Saints were 40.7 percent (24-59) from the field while hitting on a sizzling 93.8 percent (15-16) from the free throw line. Pikeville (21-7, 16-6 MSC) shot better everywhere, hitting on 49.0 percent from the field and 94.1 percent from the line.
While still No. 1 in the NAIA nationally, the loss dropped the Saints (20-2 in the MSC) to No. 2 in the conference behind a NAIA No. 3 Campbellsville team that beat TMU at home 70-59 the second time these teams played Jan. 28. Campbellsville is 21-1 in the MSC.
By virtue of its regular season championship, Campbellsville earns an automatic bid to the NAIA postseason tournament. Should it win the MSC tourney, the second-place finisher will earn one of the conference’s two automatic bids.
Thomas More, as the No. 2 seed, returns to action Friday at 6:30 pm ET in the quarterfinals of the MSC Tournament against a team to be determined by the results of the first-round games earlier in the week.
PIKEVILLE MEN 84, NO. 16 THOMAS MORE MEN 83 (Overtime)
Getting 71 points from its big three — Jacob Jones with a career-high 28, Wyatt Vieth with 24 and five threes and Reid Jolly with 19 — the Saints (21-7, 15-7 MSC) just couldn’t quite get enough scoring from the rest of a roster without starters Noah Pack and Casey George.
For a 17-11 Pikeville team (13-9 MSC), this was a bit of revenge for an earlier 66-52 loss to TMU on the road. For the Saints, the loss gives them a 7-5 finish in their last 12 games after opening 14-2.
Thomas More finishes No. 3 in the MSC at 15-7 behind No. 1 Georgetown (18-4) and No. 2 Freed-Hardeman (16-6). The Saints will return to action in the MSC Tournament in the Bowling Green (Ky) Arena this weekend in the Saturday quarterfinals with the opponent and game time to be determined by the results of the first-round games earlier in the week.
As the regular season winner, Georgetown earned one of the MSC’s two NAIA tournament bids. Should Georgetown win the conference tournament, the second-place finisher will also get an automatic NAIA tourney bid.
