No. 5 Trailblazers battle from behind to pick up Region 24 win over Shawnee

VINCENNES, Ind. – The Vincennes University Trailblazers climbed back into the top-five in this week’s NJCAA Division I National rankings, moving up one spot to No. 5.

The Blazers looked to be off to a quick start Wednesday night when VU hosted Shawnee Community College from Ullin, Illinois, but quickly fell behind after going cold offensively late in the first half.

Trailing by as many as 11 in the second half, the Trailblazers battled their way back to pick up a 67-62 victory over the Saints.

Vincennes got off to a quick start Wednesday night in front of the home crowd, scoring 12 of the first 15 points of the game to build an early nine point lead, which would hold at 16-7.

Shawnee would come to life though midway through the opening period, outscoring VU 11-2 to even the score at 18-18 and later use a 12-2 run to take a 30-21 lead.

VU would cut the deficit down to eight with a late free throw to end the first half, heading into the locker room trailing Shawnee 30-22.

Shawnee continued to ride the momentum of their first half run into the second half, building their largest lead of the game at 37-26 and holding a 41-31 lead.

VU answered back in a big way to swing the momentum back with 11 unanswered to take a 42-41 lead with just under 12:30 remaining on the clock.

The lead changed hands nine times during the second half of play, with VU trailing by four at 50-46 before rallying back again to take a 51-50 lead with under six minutes to play.

Vincennes got a big late game boost from back-to-back threes by sophomore Kent King (Washington, D.C.) and freshman Lebron Thomas (Bishopville, S.C.), connecting from behind the arc just before the shot clock buzzer sounded to give the Blazers a 61-56 advantage.

This lead would hold for the Blazers as VU put the game away at the free throw line, giving Vincennes the 67-62 victory over the Saints.

“Cold would be an understatement to describe the end of that first half,” VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. “We just quit functioning. Over the last two and a half weeks I’ve said that I’m going to sit over here and there’s no more ‘I can’t play because Coach is being too tough’. I’m still giving the instructions and I didn’t see any reason in the world why we shouldn’t be able to function but we didn’t.”

“We were in a position early to really put them down and in trouble,” Franklin added. “The game was really sitting there and it was there for us to take control of the game and we went from that to nobody functioning. We’ve got an army of sophomores. We’ve got an army of sophomores who have been through it and have played in an Elite Eight. Been in big games, been in these positions, etc. But if you watched that half, did you see anything that said we have a bunch of old sophomores? So it’s a problem.”

“Somehow I haven’t gotten across to them whatever it is, but we can’t continue with that,” Franklin said. “We’ll see if we make some changes before Saturday because that can’t happen. Shawnee doubled the post. That’s it. They totally sold out to double the post. We work on that, obviously, because we go into the post all of the time. We train for that and have actions that get us open, but it really didn’t matter because we really didn’t want any part of it. The perimeter didn’t want any part of it. They didn’t want any part of an open shot. The post still could have gone up and scored but they didn’t go through it with enough intensity.”