Aces preparing for MVC Championship

 

1. LOUIS – For the second time in the last four weeks, University of Evansville setter Kora Ruff has been recognized as the Missouri Valley Conference Freshman of the Week.

Evansville’s final match of the regular season saw Ruff finish with 55 assists and 10 digs.  Her efforts saw Giulia Cardona pick up 24 kills while Alondra Vazquez recorded 19.  UE has won seven matches in a row where Ruff has picked up at least 40 assists.  Ruff picked up 10 digs in the win and contributed at least 7 in each Valley match during the season.

With 1,232 assists in her freshman campaign, Kora Ruff ranks fourth in the nation and second among all freshmen.  Her average of 10.27 per set ranks fourth in the MVC but her efforts in the last 13 matches has been lights out – she has recorded 11.28 assists per set over that time.

She was previously named the MVC Freshman of the Week on October 31.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – University of Southern Indiana Men’s Basketball fought hard, but lost to the University of Notre Dame, 82-70, Wednesday evening in South Bend, Indiana. The Screaming Eagles are 1-2 after tonight’s action, while the Fighting Irish begin 2022-23, 3-0.
 
The Eagles fell behind early in the opening half as the Irish took advantage USI’s cold field goal shooting to post a 13-5 lead before six minutes were gone. USI was just two-of-nine from field to start game.
 
Notre Dame doubled up USI at 22-11 and posted its largest lead at 30-13 with 7:07 remaining the opening frame. The Eagles would battle back with an 8-3 run to cut the deficit to 33-21 with 3:53 on the first half clock when senior forward Jacob Polakovich (Grand Rapids, Michigan) laid in a bucket. Polakovich had six of the eight points during the surge.
 
USI cooled in the final two minutes of the first half as Notre Dame re-extended the margin to 17, 42-25, and conclude the first half.
 
After the Irish opened with a pair of buckets to take a 21-point lead, 46-25, to begin the final 20 minutes, the Eagles’ offense caught fire with a 18-5 run to cut the deficit to nine points, 51-43. Polakovich led the way with eight of the 17-points, while graduate forward Trevor Lakes (Lebanon, Indiana) dropped in five.
 
Notre Dame would rebound to re-extend their advantage to double-digits with a quick 12-4 burst to lead 61-45 at the midway point of the second half. The Irish would slowly pull away in the final five minutes in putting the lid on a 82-70 final, despite USI scoring the final eight points.  
 
USI, as a team, was dead even in the battle on the glass, 35-35, and for the third-straight game was a smoother team in the second half. The Eagles shot 48.4 percent from the field (15-31) in the second half, compared to 34.4 percent (11-32) in the opening half, and outscored the Irish, 45-40, in the final 20 minutes.
 
Individually, Lakes led three players in double-digits with 21 points. He was seven-of-11 from the field, five-of-seven from long range, and two-of-three from the stripe.
 
Polakovich followed with 16 points and 10 rebounds in his 2022-23 debut. The senior forward was seven-of-10 from the field and completed his first double-double by grabbing three offensive and seven defensive boards.
 
Junior guard Gary Solomon (Detroit, Michigan) rounded out the double-digit scorers with 11 points and dished a game-high five assists.
 

Aces fall by six at the Ford Center

 

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Trailing by as many as 17 points in the first half, the University of Evansville men’s basketball team rallied to make it a 1-point game in the final 20 minutes before Southeast Missouri State finished with a 67-61 victory at the Ford Center.

“SEMO came ready to play.  They have been battle-tested and did what good teams do.  We were a little reactive with the excitement of being at home and having a good crowd,” UE head coach David Ragland explained.  “We need to be proactive in our approach and be ready to play for each other and do what we did in the second half for the entire 40 minutes.”

Leading the way for the Purple Aces was Kenny Strawbridge Jr.   His 22-point effort saw him knock down 7 of his 17 attempts.  Yacine Toumi recorded 13 points and 7 rebounds.  Marvin Coleman II and Sekou Kalle got the job done on the boards recording 12 apiece.  For Coleman, it tied his career-high from his days at UNLV while Kalle’s effort was a new career-best.

Strawbridge converted the first field goal of the night for UE to break a 4-4 tie.  SEMO scored the next five tallies and would go up 11-7 on a Josh Earley triple at the 11:43 mark.  Yacine Toumi hit a free throw that made it a 1-possession game at 13-10 but it was the Redhawks who had the answer.

Outscoring the Aces by an 11-1 tally, SEMO went up by a 24-11 score inside of seven minutes remaining in the half.  Two free throws from Earley gave the Redhawks their largest advantage (34-17) with the half entering the final two minutes.  Evansville hit a pair of field goals in the final moments to close the gap to a 13-point gap of 36-23 at the break.  The story of the half was the SEMO defense which held UE to 26.1% shooting in the opening stanza.

Baskets by Toumi and Gage Bobe opened the second half for UE and would set the stage for Strawbridge.  His 3-pointer at the 17:20 mark cut the deficit to just seven – 38-31.  After the Redhawks pushed the lead back to seven points, the Aces continued to storm back.

What was once a 17-point deficit was cut to just one tally as a triple on the break by Blaise Beauchamp made it a 45-44 game with 11 minutes remaining.  Strawbridge had a field goal during the rally and picked up the steal that led to Beauchamp’s three.  SEMO had an immediate answer with Adam Larson draining a three.

Another SEMO triple pushed the lead to 53-46 with 8:25 remaining and UE could not get back within one possession as the Redhawks finished the night with a 67-61 win.

Chris Harris led four Redhawk double figure scorers.  He posted 14 while tying for the team high with six boards.  Kobe Clark and Josh Earley tallied 13 each.  SEMO outshot UE by a 41.8%-32.3% margin.  Evansville won the battle of the boards, 44-40.

On Saturday, the Aces are back on the road for a 2 p.m. game at SMU.

VINCENNES, Ind. – The Vincennes University Trailblazer men’s basketball team jumped up 12 spots in the latest NJCAA Division I polls this week and were able to defend their new ranking Wednesday night at the P.E. Complex after defeating NJCAA Division II No. 5 Henry Ford College 83-80, for VU’s seventh straight victory to begin the season.

The Trailblazers got off to a slow start Wednesday night and trailed early before using an 8-0 scoring run to jump ahead 12-8.

VU would grow their lead to nine before Henry Ford rallied back to take the lead back with a 12-0 scoring run.

The Blazers would answer late in the first half and close out the opening 20 minutes of play on a 9-0 scoring run to take a 41-38 lead into the locker room.

Vincennes quickly expanded their lead early in the second half back to nine before the visiting Hawks cut the deficit back to three.

VU used a 12-0 scoring run to take their biggest lead of the night at 72-55 with 5:39 left to play.

Henry Ford then shifted into another gear, slowly chipping away at the deficit until the Hawks followed a three-point make with a steal and a layup on the inbounds pass to cut the VU lead down to three with under a minute to play.

Vincennes would manage to hold on late at the free throw line as the Trailblazers picked up their seventh straight win to start the season with an 83-80 win over Henry Ford.

“Henry Ford was a good team and they played us tough,” VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. “We were able to win by three tonight because we were up 17 and then we quit playing. We had the game won. All we had to do was be tough-minded enough to get it finished, but we weren’t that type of tough-minded all night and yet we still found a way to be up by 17. But I never felt like we were locked-in like we have been.”

“Then we just let Henry Ford be the total aggressor down the stretch,” Franklin added. “We let them get the ball to the middle of the lane and get to the glass. We were soft to the ball. We shot a terrible shot with two minutes to go when we were up 10. Missed a layup off the bottom of the rim, which we did repeatedly tonight. It was just a lot of soft. Then when the game got turned, we weren’t tough enough to grit our teeth and stop it.”

“Some of it is just stopping the ball,” Franklin said. “Then you have to get on the glass. They missed enough shots, but we just didn’t clean it off the glass. I don’t think we cut very hard for the ball. I didn’t think it was that hard to get the ball in and make the plays, we kind of played into it.”

“That’s on me,” Franklin added. “Because I knew the intensity level that we needed. I tried to coach it during the game, unfortunately, because I’m coaching intensity instead of strategy and that has got to change. That can’t happen again. But if it does happen again, we’ll probably take a loss. We don’t have easy games. Every game is a real game. We don’t have the ability to say, ‘well we’ll just be that tonight and we won’t know it because the other team can’t play with us’.”

“If you want to be special then it can’t be what it was tonight, you have to be stronger than that,” Franklin said. “If you are not, then you are not going to be special. If you are playing at Vincennes and you are trying to do what we are trying to do, then we have to put that on display. If somebody beats us that way, that’s fine. If you lose a game going to war, focused and intense, you still don’t like it, but you can live with it. Tonight, for the first time for a complete game, we were not the tougher team. I thought in the second half there was a stretch where they looked ready to go and in that stretch, we kept getting the lead, but we weren’t really locked in. Had we been, we could have put them all the way out. But we weren’t.”

“No disrespect to Henry Ford, they have got a really good team, they are going to have a lot of success at their level. They have played very well in our district and they play very well against a lot of Division I teams,” Franklin added. “But there is no reason that tonight we didn’t win this game by 15 plus. There is no reason other than we weren’t tough-minded enough, focused enough or intense enough and physical enough. That’s not our basketball family. You don’t get to do that here and we did. So now we’ve done it once. We did it for 25 minutes against Macomb. Now we have to break that habit, that can’t happen anymore. I’m going to try and address that in the next couple of days. I’m going to try to coach that up better so I don’t have to coach it Saturday night during the game. We are going to coach it tomorrow and Friday and then we will play the people who show me that they want to make sure they don’t display that again. I don’t think that is too much to ask. It’s a good win tonight, because Henry Ford is a good team. But it wasn’t a good performance.”

The Blazers were led offensively by sophomore Caleb Johnson (N. Preston, Nova Scotia) who picked up 14 of his team-leading 19 points in the second half, while also adding five rebounds and a pair of steals.