DePauw men's basketball headed to semifinals
On Tuesday night, the DePauw Univeristy men's basketball team fed off of an electric atmosphere at Neal Fieldhouse to earn a 73-59 victory over the Wabash College Little Giants and advance to the North Coast Athletic Conference semifinals.
The Tigers raced out to an early 13-0 lead in the first three and a half minutes. Junior guard Bob Dillon led the way through this stretch scoring the last eight points of the run on two layups, a three-pointer and a free throw.
"It's always a fun atmosphere with Wabash and DePauw," said Dillon. "I got that first layup that got me going, and from there on it was going in for me."
Following the Little Giants' first basket of the game, DePauw's Tommy Fernitz sunk a layup that made the Tigers 6-6 shooting in the first five minutes of action.
Wabash responded well, however, and closed the DePauw lead to four points with about seven minutes to play in the first half.
"It was kind of inevitable that they were going to settle into the game and make a run," said DePauw Head Coach Bill Fenlon. "We certainly didn't expect that they were going to go away. I think you have to make them go away, which we eventually did."
A key point in the game came with just under three minutes to play in the opening half when Wabash's Kasey Oetting fouled DePauw first-year Luke Lattner hard. Lattner fell to the floor and landed on his elbow. Despite being visibly shaken up, Lattner made one of his free throws and stayed in the game.
"You know in the heat of the game, I feel like I might have overreacted a little bit," said Dillon. "I felt like he got to [Lattner] after the whistle was blown, but it wasn't anything too big."
However, the foul got the Tiger faithful into the game and added to the energy in the building.
Aided by the crowd's support, the Tigers went on a run that helped them take a ten-point lead over the Little Giants into halftime.
The Tigers opened the second half on a scoring run that helped keep Wabash from making it a close game. A 6-0 run to open the final 20 minutes helped give the Tigers a 44-28 lead.
From there on, DePauw dominated the contest. The closest Wabash trimmed the deficit to was 11 points, as the Tigers would go on to earn an easy 73-59 win over their arch rivals.
"We just needed to win that game," said Fenlon. "A lot of people are way more hung up on the beating Wabash thing than I am. The next step was getting to the weekend in the conference tournament, so from that standpoint it was a really big win for us."
Senior Michael Wilkison led all scorers with 20 points and became the 25th person in over century of Tiger basketball to score 1000 points in a DePauw uniform.
When looking at the statistics, the two teams were virtually identical in shooting percentage. Each team shot over 25 percent from beyond the arc and above 40 percent from the floor. The disparity on the stats sheet is evident in the inside game. The Tigers outscored the Little Giants 34-26 in the paint and grabbed 13 more rebounds.
However, there are still areas where Fenlon would like to see improvement. The DePauw bench was outscored 43-14 by the Wabash reserves.
Despite this, the Tigers will live to play another day, as they head to the College of Wooster for the semifinals of the NCAC tournament against Wittenberg University.
The Tigers of Wittenberg have not provided DePauw with much of a challenge this season. In the teams' two previous meetings, DePauw has outscored Wittenberg by a total of 48 points including a 72-46 point thrashing in mid January.
"Overall, we know what it takes to beat Wittenberg," said junior Tommy Fernitz. "This is the third time we are playing them this season, so we know that they are going to come out strong and ready to play. Wittenberg is a very good team, but I think we just need to match their intensity and play our game and the rest will take care of itself."
With a win this Friday night, the Tigers could advance to the championship game of the NCAC tournament for the first time in school history. Tip off against Wittenberg is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. Friday evening.
Balanced attack helps women move on in NCAC tournament
For the first time in almost two years, DePauw University's women's basketball team took the floor with a blemish on their record. But the Tigers dominated when they hosted the College of Wooster in the quarterfinals of the NCAC tournament.
The Tigers came into Tuesday night's playoff game following a devastating 65-64 loss to Ohio Wesleyan University in their regular season finale.
In the first game since their 58 game winning streak snapped, the Tigers advanced easily onto the semifinals of the NCAC tournament with a 71-40 win over the Fighting Scots.
From the opening tip, it was clear that the Tigers were in a class far above Wooster. DePauw took an early six point lead in the first three minutes and was off and running from there.
DePauw took a commanding 40-17 lead into halftime thanks to a solid 12-25 shooting mark.
The second half was more of the same for the Tigers, as their massive lead ballooned to 38 points. DePauw ended up winning by a final score of 71-40.
"You never know what's going to happen if you don't win," said senior Ann Sarkisian. "I mean it's win and advance, so it's really important that we started the tournament off right."
Hannah Douglas led the Tigers with only 12 points, but it was the balanced attack by DePauw that got the job done. All but three of the 16 women on the roster scored. The DePauw bench chipped in with 30 and outscored their Fighting Scots counterparts by 22 points.
"We have even practices all year," said Sarkisian. "So we're preparing everyone the same way. [Coach Huffman] develops all of her teams this way."
The fourth ranked Tigers are back in action when they host Kenyon College at Neal Fieldhouse on Friday night at 8 p.m.