ERIC THIELE STAFF WRITER
The Wartburg men’s basketball team finished the week 2-0 with wins over Coe, 60-59, and Central, 65-59, winning three of their last five games.
On Wednesday Wartburg was led by Kelly McCarville who had 19 points and five rebounds.
Rebounding was a strong point for the Knights, outboarding the Dutch 44 to 32. However, ball handling and decision-making were a problem for the Knights as they had 18 turnovers.
“We battled really hard and did very well rebounding the ball, but we need to make better decisions with the ball and we don’t need to be in a hurry,” head coach Dick Peth said.
The Knights defense was able to keep the Dutch to only one player scoring in double digits and the Knights held the Dutch to only 34.8 percent shooting.
“The team had a good finish to the first half, we made some changes in the locker room and had a big steal by Ross Timmermans that really shifted the momentum in our favor,” Peth said.
On Saturday, the Knights were able to pull out 60-59 overtime win at Coe.
The Knights won the rebound battle once again, 37-32, and only allowed Coe to shoot 35 percent from the field.
Wartburg had a 29-25 lead going into halftime and were able to get the lead up to nine points with 13 minutes left in the game. Then Coe went on a run and were able to tie the game at 54 with one minute and seven seconds left in the game.
The Knights had a chance to win the game with one second left when Cashes Mason went for a layup but missed and the game went into overtime where the Knights prevailed.
Wartburg went to the UW-Eau Claire Tournament on December 29 and 30 and won the first game against Jamestown (N.D.) by a score of 74-68.
That put the Knights in the championship game against host UW-Eau Claire. The Blu-Golds came out on top, 92-70.
“Beating Jamestown was a big win for us,” Peth said. “We had a bad start versus UW-Eau Claire and had troubling scoring, which is what killed us.”
On Jan. 3, the Knights dropped their second conference game against Loras, 76-73.
Wartburg is currently 6-6 overall and 2-2 in the Iowa Conference and will host Luther Wednesday at 8 p.m.
Photo by Luke Shanno