I’ll preface by saying, as Chris likes to - it’s a 20 round fight. We took some hits in the first few and got whistle screwed out of one in happy valley. Nonetheless, we are where we are, and we stepped up to get back to 2-4.
Let’s not kid ourselves it’s still an uphill battle. But that was a HUGE and necessary win to keep us in the season. We needed to go 10-5 to get to 11-9 (which I think is what we need to make the tourney given the non conf schedule and results), now the equation is similar but going 9-5 is a lot lot better than needing to go 10-4. Next 5 games schedule remains very difficult. It’s brutal but we probably somehow need to pull 3-2 out of that.
In any event, it wasn’t pretty tonight, but it felt the whole way through like we were the better, smarter, more disciplined, more talented team. We nearly lost it at the FT line, but big players made big plays in the end. Ty Berry found his stroke toward the end of the first half. Martinelli converted on quirky leaners. Nicholson was a beast inside, and aside from FTs played a strong strong game especially on D. Leach was effective as PG against the press. Brooks just did Brooks things, he looked back to his normal self. Nothing special just a ho him 20/10/5 night for him. Ciaravino brought energy. Windham hit a clutch 3. Fitzmorris got abused in the first half and then stepped back up for some huge minutes on D in the second half.
And then after all that, giving up a lead, physical battle the whole way through, Nick found the critical floater to get us the desperately needed W.
They may not paint pictures of it, but every conference W is huge. We need to defend home court.
Onto Michigan. Go Cats!
