Men and Women Sweep in Portland

It was a big weekend for both the men and women’s basketball teams this weekend. Both teams traveled to Portland to play Warner Pacific and Cascade College. The women needed the wins to contest for the fourth-place finish in the conference and get a home playoff game. The men needed the win to keep the first-place tie with Eastern Oregon. The trip was as successful as they come.

The women boasted an 82-48 win over Warner Pac while the men came back from a late run to win 79-69. Saturday night against Cascade resulted in two, almost-twenty-point wins. The women won 57-38 and the men 82-64.

Friday night’s women’s game was one of the most fun games all year! The half-time score of 47-21 tells it all. We played great defense, scored a lot, and had a grand old time! We came away with the game at the very beginning, and from there on, things just sort of fell into place. We shot extremely well, making 44.4% of our field goal attempts and 50% of our 3-point attempts. We also shot over 86% from the free-throw line.

The men’s game Friday night was a little different. They came away with a 48-33 half-time lead. That’s a comfortable lead, you’d think; right? Well shooting got the Warner Pac Knights back into the game. They were down by about 20, and within a matter of a couple minutes, were only down by four! But, our men kept their composure and withheld the run to come away with the 10-point victory. The owl’s did miss a few free-throws early in the fouling process, which got me a little nervous, but they started to get it together and made the shots when it counted. It was a fun and exciting game, and just like last year the gym was packed full! I could hardly see the court there were so many people crowded around.

Saturday night had a little different setting. Besides the dull lighting and a floor full of dead-spots, there were no crowds chanting on the sidelines and the stands were not full. The only chanting I heard came from the left of me, where some OIT fans would yell, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oiu, oiu, oiu.” Of course, this was said on behalf of Josh Wetzler, every time he made a play. It was great to hear and made me laugh. It was much appreciated since I began to get rather bored and antsy during the men’s game. The great thing about the game was that, besides Ryan Fiegi’s 22 points, everyone else was relatively even in points. Nobody else tallied over 10 points, and everyone had at least one rebound. That’s a team effort right there!

The women’s game was one of those that felt like it lasted forever. It seemed like we just couldn’t quite get it together in the first half, barely going into half-time with a three-point lead. The second half was another story. We played phenomenal defense and held Cascade to just 9.5% from the field. That has to be some kind of record. It was crazy. And what was even more exciting is that we finally got our high-low game to consistently work. They put a guard on me, and their post on our post, so I went down low and posted up. I got stellar passes from our high post and was able to convert them to lay-ups, multiple times. It was really exciting!

After the great play from both teams this weekend, I can only hope that it will carry over to the upcoming games against Southern Oregon on Tuesday and Northwest Christian on Saturday. As always, they are both critical games, and can definitely be won, but if either team is not prepared to play, the results could be devastating.