The DePauw men’s basketball team spent the weekend on the road as they traveled to Allegheny College on Friday and Hiram on Saturday.
They headed home from Hiram, Ohio disappointed after losing both games by scores of 59-73 and 71-85. These two losses extended the team’s losing streak to six games.
The Tigers took on Alleghany without starter, leading rebounder and most dangerous post threat junior Jack VandeMerkt. The forward was sidelined due to a sickness. This reflected in the rebounding margin where the team was outrebounded 45-29. The team was also outscored in the paint 38-10. Head Coach Bruce Fenlon said the absence of VandeMerkt was tough for the team to overcome.
“It’s going to hurt your rebounding totals when your most efficient rebounder is out with the flu,” Fenlon said. “And even though he played at Hiram, he was still limited. We also give it to him in the post offensively quite a bit and run some things through him so it hurts to not have that either.”
The lead changed eight times and DePauw led 33-30 at the half before being outscored by 17 points in the second half. Junior, Chris Burrough led the Tigers with 14 points. Senior Luke Lattner, scored 11, junior David Vogel added 10 and senior Nate Jahn scored nine.
The team got back on the I-70 westbound that night to make their second stop of the weekend at Hiram College. This time DePauw never led at any point in the game, only letting a halftime deficit of 37-31 increase to the final score of 85-71. One reason for the recent second-half struggles comes with the team losing some of its attention to detail.
“If you watch the film of our second halves,” Fenlon said, “You can see that we aren’t doing the little things as well. Our rebounding is weaker, we are opening up wider lanes to drive on defense, sometimes missing the open man on offense. We need to keep the focus up in the second half.”
Despite the limited return of VandeMerkt at Hiram, the team was still outrebounded 42-28 and outscored in second chance points 23-11. Vogel says the team needs to address the rebounding problem immediately. “Rebounding has definitely been something we have to work on in practice,” Vogel said. “We've gotten killed on the glass the past couple games.”
Lattner led the Tigers with 14 points and was the only player to score in double figures. Vogel scored nine, and sophomore Pete Feely scored eight off the bench. Junior Forest Nettles recorded seven points and grabbed a team-high four rebounds in just nine minutes of play.
Despite their losing streak being extended to six games, the team remains confident heading into the postseason. “We know we can beat anyone when we get into the tournament,” Vogel said. “We still feel like we've got a pretty good shot to position ourselves for the conference tourney over the next four games. We just need to play well for the rest of the regular season.”
The Tigers have shown the potential to knock off the best teams in the conference with strong efforts against both Wooster College and Denison University. Fenlon wants his team to focus on the positive games and come into the postseason with the confidence to make a run. “I think some of the guys are disappointed because we haven’t won any of the big games yet,” Fenlon said, “But we are right there in all of them. Our players know this and they know we have the talent to pull off some of these games in the conference tournament.”
The Tigers now sit at 9-12 overall and 5-9 in the NCAC for seventh. They return to action at home on Wednesday against 23rd ranked Denison at 8p.m..