WCU stuns No. 12 Shippensburg in runaway win at Hollinger

WEST CHESTER >> An up and down basketball season — which has largely been a frustrating one for West Chester head coach Damien Blair — turned last weekend with an epic comeback. And the Golden Rams followed it up on Wednesday with an even more impressive performance and outcome.

In front of a boisterous crowd at Hollinger Field House, WCU notched its biggest victory of the season, not just upsetting firstplace Shippensburg but pulling away late for a commanding 9370 PSAC triumph over the 12th ranked team in all of Division II. In the season’s first meeting in mid-January, the Rams suffered a 42-point road setback against the Red Raiders.

“I’ve been interested to see what this young group could do against East Stroudsburg, Shippensburg and Kutztown on our home floor,” Blair said. “I wanted to see where we were at.

“I thought we had been taking baby steps to get to where we want to be. The baby steps are starting to become full steps. Hopefully we can get some strides in there.”

Last Saturday, the Rams overcame a 19-point second half deficit to stun East Stroudsburg at Hollinger. West Chester scored 17 of the last 18 points in that clash, and the momentum continued to build earlier this week.

“Confidence played a big-part in our win today,” said junior Tyrell Long, who poured in a career-high 31 points. “And we have a confidence playing on our home court. It feels very comfortable.

“I think the click actually happened when we won at Cheyney (on Feb. 8). It wasn’t our best performance, but that’s when our confidence started rolling, and even though we got down to East Stroudsburg, we kept fighting. So heading into tonight, we felt like we could beat anyone.”

Winners of three straight and four of the last five, the Rams (10-9 in the PSAC East, 12-12 overall) are suddenly raising eyebrows all across the PSAC. And they did it again without a key player in the lineup: this time leading scorer Malik Jackson (20 points per game). The sophomore was suspended at some point after Saturday’s contest for what appears to be academic reasons.

“They call it a student-athlete for a reason,” Blair said. “You will notice that ‘student’ is first. That’s all I will say.”

But WCU welcomed back sophomore point guard Matt Penecale, who missed the

previous four games due to a foot injury. Despite playing in some pain, the sophomore was in prime form with 18 points, seven assists and zero turnovers in 33 minutes of action.

“It feels real good to have our point guard back. He’s like a second coach out there,” Long said.

“I knew Matt would be up for this game,” Blair added. “In warmups, he said it felt OK. In practice (Tuesday), he had no pain, so it concerned me. But he did an excellent job.”

In addition, big man Thomas White returned last weekend from a three-game suspension for violating unspecified team rules. So even without Jackson, the Rams were able to notch season highs in shooting percentage (60.6) and three-point accuracy (10-of-19).

“They did an excellent job of executing the offense, but more importantly, they followed the gameplan defensively,” Blair said. “They still frustrate me. But today we started one junior and the rest sophomores. So the future is bright.”

Shippensburg shot just 36 percent from the floor, was outrebounded by 15 and falls to 17-3, 21-3 overall.

“We made a lot of adjustments from the last time we played them,” Long said. “We got beat pretty bad out there.”

There was, obviously, a lot of carryover from the unlikely comeback four days earlier as the Rams blitzed the Raiders for much of the first half. The WCU lead topped out at 10 with just over two minutes left in the first half, but Shippensburg erased the lead with a 14-4 run sandwiched around the halftime break.

It stayed close until the Rams began to pull away, starting with a 12-2 run with just over eight minutes remaining fueled by back-toback 3-pointers from Penecale and freshman Zach Bare. A few moments later, Long scored on three straight possessions to widen the margin to 78-64.

“With Malik out, I didn’t want to put all of the scoring load on my shoulders,” Long explained. “I just let the game come to me.”

In the final five minutes of regulation, West Chester staged a strong finishing kick reminiscent to what happened down the stretch against ESU. The Rams wound up scoring 11 of the final 13 points.

Now tied for fourth in the PSAC East with Bloomsburg, WCU has road games at Lock Haven and Millersville before closing out the regular season at home against defending champion Kutztown.

For the day, Long shot 13for-16 and added 13 rebounds. Bare added 15 points and Jackson Hyland chipped in 11.

“It was (Long’s) most complete game, and he’s about 60 percent,” Blair pointed out. “He couldn’t turn the corner because of his ankle. If he was 100 percent, he might have had 40.”