Men’s basketball wins 98-73 victory over Midland Warriors, maintaining 11-game winning streak
Sophomore forward Lukas Helms (2) looks to pass the ball to an open teammate (photo from previous game).
Photo credit: Maddy Peters
By Cohen Carpenter
Concordia Nebraska men’s basketball team, newly minted as No. 13 in the country, cemented a January for the record books, going undefeated in their past 11 games with a 98-73 Wednesday night victory over the Midland Warriors and moving to within one game of the top spot in the Great Plains Athletic Conference.
The nature of this winning streak is just as impressive as the streak itself. In only one of these 11 contests, dating back to December 28, has the opposing team come within 10 points of the Bulldogs final score. This sole contest was a January 11 matchup versus Briar Cliff where the Chargers took the Bulldogs to overtime but eventually lost 84-80.
This time around, it was the Midland Warriors on the chopping block. To Midland’s credit, the game was hotly contested in the first frame, with the Warriors pulling to within four points after a Midland three-pointer made it 36-32. However, from then on out, head coach Ben Limback’s squad took the reins.
“That was an impressive offensive effort,” said Limback. “We were making some early threes. [Jaxon] Stueve got off to a great start and Brad [Bennett] got involved. I thought, offensively, we were okay in the first half. Second half was way better with movement. We really shared the ball. Midland was trying to protect the paint against Tristan [Smith] and Noah [Schutte], which creates openings for shooters. When Noah and Tristan are unselfish like that – we have a lot of guys who can score it.”
Senior Tristan Smith notched yet another 20-point outing, going 10-14 from the floor with a team leading nine rebounds and six assists to boot. The performance comes after Smith’s Concordia Invitational Tournament MVP performance and fourth weekly GPAC award of the year. Smith’s running buddy, fellow senior Noah Schutte did some nice things with the ball as well. Concordia’s all-time leader scorer went 4-7 from the field and 3-4 from downtown, good for 13 points, six rebounds and a team-high seven assists.
Nevertheless, the star of the show Wednesday night was sophomore Jaxon Stueve. The two-time GPAC defensive player of the week led the team in scoring with 21 points on 8-12 shooting and 5-8 from three. Defensively, Stueve had the pleasure of guarding Midland’s Jake Orr for most of the game. Orr, Midland’s leading scorer, dropped 33 on the Bulldogs in their previous matchup on November 26th. This time around, Orr could only manage 14 on 6-17 shooting.
“Defensively, I thought it was our intensity,” said Stueve to Jake Knabel in a post-game interview. “We played them in November, and I thought, back then we were kind of slacking on defense. We’ve been working hard in practice, and the coaches had a great scout for us to try and stop Midland. We executed the plan.”
Next up the Bulldogs will take on a 3-18 Waldorf squad who are looking to snap a nine-game losing streak. Tip-off for that contest will be Saturday, Feb. 1 at 3:45 pm.