Men’s basketball faces Briar Cliff in a close but successful match
Photo description: Junior Brad Bennett looks for a place to send the ball.
Photo credit: Esther Molina (photo from previous game)
Maddy Peters
Sports Editor
The Concordia men’s basketball team rematched the Briar Cliff University Chargers Saturday afternoon at home, winning in a close 87-82 game.
The team came off a devastating 79-78 loss to Hastings College a few days earlier to play another nail-biter against a team they narrowly beat back in December.
The men had a shotgun start to the first half, putting up nearly 20 points before Briar Cliff came from behind to even out the score. A couple early timeouts from the Chargers broke up the Bulldog rhythm enough that they could barely keep the lead until the last two minutes. Briar Cliff led at half 44-40.
The second half started rough as Briar Cliff maintained and lengthened their lead. The Chargers got nine points ahead of the Bulldogs before it was whittled down back to a manageable few points. The difference came through sophomore Zac Kulus, who went 4-5 at the three-point line and breathed new life into Concordia. They took the lead, ran away with it, had it whittled back down, but maintained it.
For the last minute, however, the win was in jeopardy as Concordia led by one point. Both teams had the bonus, so any foul would result in free throws. With 44 seconds left, Briar Cliff was fouled and went to the line, but missed both throws. Their frustration resulted in two fouls against Concordia, sending the team to the line for four more points to win the game.
Junior Brad Bennett was the top scorer of the day with 20 points. Four other Bulldogs achieved double digits including juniors Tristan Smith (17) and Noah Schutte (15), Kulus (12) and freshman Jaxon Stueve (11). Schutte also led in assists with eight, while Smith led in rebounds with nine and Stueve in steals with four.
Schutte had the honor of surpassing 1,500 career points in the game against Briar Cliff. He is the tenth men’s basketball player to achieve that record. The last player to make that record was former teammate Carter Kent.
“1,500 is a lot of points,” said Head Coach Ben Limback, “and I think he is an extremely gifted young man, but an even better person. He’s so humble I think it’s one of those where the record, or 1,500, is something that he’ll look back upon. There’s very few that have done it, and for him it’s a pretty special thing for both him and our team.”
The back-and-forth game could attribute their win to Kulus, who showed up and locked in when it counted. He made a quarter of the team’s three-pointers.
“I thought we got off to a great start,” said Limback, “then [Briar Cliff] called a couple timeouts and then we got a little relaxed defensively. I thought [Briar Cliff] got into a rhythm, but in the second half, I thought we turned it up. Zac Kulus came into the game, and then we started to get out and run when our defense got stops. Fun ending down the stretch, just fortunate that we made the plays.”
The team has not had too many close games this season, but in three of their losses the scores were such because they struggled to follow through. Limback has been working on keeping their cool in stressful late-game situations to ensure that they know what they are doing.
“We have guys that just buy into the team, and we practice a lot of these situations, so they know what they’re doing,” said Limback. “They definitely had the composure tonight and we’ve won a lot of close games this year despite a lot of young guys, but I think when you’ve got guys like Noah Schutte, Brad Bennett and Tristan Smith, I think that makes a big difference too.”
The team is now 12-5 overall and 7-4 in the Great Plains Athletic Conference. They travel to face Mount Marty University in Yankton, South Dakota at 7:45 p.m. before a weekend in Mequon, Wisconsin for the Concordia Invitational Tournament.
