The Pioneers ended their long ten day, five game road
trip on a somewhat sour note Saturday night at Andrews University in Berrien
Springs, Michigan, losing 61-72.
Turnovers
and poor defensive rebounding plagued Northland in the game. The Pioneers
turned it over 17 times, gave up 20 offensive rebounds, and were losing the
entire game, at times by as much as 20.
Northland
looked as if they had pulled it together at the end of the second half, cutting
the lead to 7 at the half, but the Cardinals pushed their lead back out to 17
in the first few minutes of the second half where it stayed until the last four
minutes of the game. That is when the Pioneer came storming back. Sophomore
guards Jon Egan and Luke Valenzuela both hit threes from the right wing and
Seth Quirey had a steal for a dunk followed by a deep three to cut the lead to
9 with 2 minutes remaining.
Northland
tried to play the fouling game from there, but Andrews made their free throws
and did a good job of getting the ball to their best player Matthew Little who
was 5-5 from the line. Little, who scored 34 points against the number one team
in the nation, Grace Bible College, had 23 points on the night.
Kyler
Gardner scored 20 points to finish up his monster road trip in which he
averaged 22.6 points. Quirey had 19 points as well. Northland got good bench
scoring from Egan, Valenzula, and freshman Eric Hathaway. The Pioneer reserves
outscored those of Andrews 14-8.
The
Northland men are excited to be home and look forward to recovering from a few
tough losses against Silver Lake on Saturday and Gogebic at home on Monday.