Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
WCU’s playoff hopes takes dent
Golden Rams unable to withstand Lock Haven’s rally
West Chester collapsed during a critical five-minute second half stretch and eventually fell to Lock Haven, 88-83, on Saturday.
With nine regular season basketball games to go, the West Chester men are still projected to make the upcoming 12-team PSAC Tournament. But it probably won’t happen if the Golden Rams continue to drop games like they did on Saturday at Hollinger Field House.
Leading most of the way, WCU collapsed during a critical five-minute second half stretch and eventually fell to Lock Haven, 88-83. The Rams have now dropped three games to teams that are below them in the PSAC East standings. That’s obviously no way to make a playoff run.
Now 6-7 in the division (8-10 overall), West Chester’s modest two-game winning streak is history, and so is sole possession of fourth place in the PSAC East. Lock Haven improves to 5-8, 9-8.
“Right now, if we don’t make shots, we don’t win because we don’t do the little things,” said WCU head coach Damien Blair. “If we did a better job defending, getting to 50-50 balls, making foul shots, we would be more successful.”
It would be inaccurate to say that WCU is at fullstrength for the first time this season. But with the return of the injured Mike Jolaoso (stress fracture) and Malik Jackson (shoulder), and the second semester eligibility of Tyrell Long, the Golden Rams finally had all of their parts in uniform and ready to play at the same time on Saturday. It is still, however, a work in progress.
The conference’s secondleading scorer, Jackson suffered the injury in late December. And even though he is back and wearing a brace on his left shoulder, Jackson is clearly nowhere near 100 percent. He scored 12 points on Saturday, but needed 18 shots to do it.
“Our best player shot 4-for-18,” Blair said. “He wants to take the brace off because it’s bothering him, but (the trainers) won’t let him.
“If he plays a little better, we probably win. We are just not hitting on all cylinders.”
Defense was also a major culprit. The Bald Eagles went to the free throw line 45 times and wound up making more (28) than West Chester attempted (24).
“And we missed 10 free throws,” said Tyrell Long, who filled the stats sheet with 15 points, 14 rebounds, seven assists and six steals.
“Coach told us we have to find ways to win. That we will not go anywhere, we will not go deep into the playoffs or go anywhere near where we went last season if we don’t play some defense,”
Seemingly in control, the Rams fell victim to a difference-making second half Lock Haven rally, and never recovered. And it all started with explosive redshirt freshman Amir Hinton, who took over the game. He scored 21 of his game-high 30 points in the second half.
“We had a mental lapse,” Long acknowledged. “We have a bunch of new guys on the team, but we are halfway through the season so we can’t use that as an excuse. We can’t say, ‘well, we are young, we will get it sooner or later.’ Our mindset has to be that we need it now.”
Deadlocked at 42-all at the half, Long spearheaded an early 12-4 second half surge to put WCU ahead by eight. But midway through the half, Hinton heated up and the Eagles reeled off 18 consecutive points to take the lead, 73-63, with under seven minutes remaining. The Philadelphia native scored 16 points in just over 11 minutes of second half action, and during that stretch the Rams had a whole bunch of good looks rim out.
“It wasn’t like we were shooting 3-pointers, we were missing layups,” Blair said. “But I think when you are playing the right way, things fall your way. And we are not playing the right way.”
West Chester did stage a couple comeback bids, and eventually sliced the deficit to 83-81 with 36.5 on the clock, but were unable to score another meaningful point the rest of the way. Lock Haven wrapped it up by going 5-for-8 from the line. Unable to hit much of anything down the stretch, Matt Penecale ended the game with a 3-pointer, but it was too late.
“Coach preaches to us that even though the ball goes in and out, we still have to get stops on defense,” Long said.
“It’s the truth,” Blair added. “At the beginning of the year, I saw this coming and I explained to them that if they didn’t do what we asked of them, they would be .500. Sometimes it takes actually going through out to realize that (I was) right.
“I do think our players think we are a little better than we are.”