Owl’s Split at Southern, Sweep Against Northwest Christian

This past week held an usual schedule for the OIT basketball teams, playing Tuesday night at Southern Oregon and Friday night at Danny Miles Court against Northwest Christian.

While the men held a relatively comfortable lead the entire game against SOU, winning 89-76, the women could not come back from an early deficit, losing 58-83. For a while I though that the men were going to let the Raider’s come back for a chance to win. SOU cut the lead to 7 or 8 a couple times in the second half, but they couldn’t get any closer.

I have no clue as to why we could not play like we usually do, but our shots were off, our defense was slow and it seemed we had no energy. Granted, we did play Friday and Saturday and then had only two days to prepare, but they did the same thing. There are no room for excuses. Our heads were not in it, they shot A LOT better than us, making 53 % of the 3-point attempts while we only shot 10 percent from beyond the arc. It was rough, especially getting beat the worst we have all season to a rival school. The only thing I can say is that by playing them I know we are much better than them and I am VERY glad we have one more shot at them!

We played another close game against Northwest Christian College Friday night, winning by 1 point and coming back from a 16-point deficit. We won 50-49 in a game that took us the entire 40 min to come away with the win. If there was any less time we wouldn’t have made it. Meagan Miyasaka hit the game-winning 3-pointer with 3 seconds left on the clock! She is one that most would not expect to take the last second shot, having a pass-first mentality, but she was open, stepped up and stroked it! It was so exciting and I was extremely relieved that we came through in the end because that is a win that we definitely needed.

The men made the game seem easy, winning 90-70. However, in the beginning I was starting to think that we had rubbed off of them. Their defense was sloppy and unorganized. They seemed to get beat a lot, but they cleaned it up in a short amount of time and never looked back. I did not get to see the second half due to my hunger, but it looks like the same players from Tuesday’s game are the ones who stood out. Fiegi, Christian and Ryan Beesley all scored in double figures both nights, while on Tuesday Mike Nieraeth scored in double figures as well.

Congrats to both teams and good luck this weekend!