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Men's b-ball hits crunch time
By Ben Birnell
For the 152nd time since the two teams battled in the 1923-24 season, the Huskies and the Minnesota State University-Mankato Mavericks will meet for the first time this season Saturday night at Halenbeck Hall.
The game could possibly shake a few things up in the North Central Conference with just a little over a month left in the regular season.
Both teams are currently in the upper echelon of teams in the conference. MSU is clinging to second place with a 4-2 conference record, just a game in front of the Huskies at 3-3. That being said, a Husky win this weekend paired with a Nebraska-Omaha loss might shuffle things around the in NCC. A Husky win could also help the rankings in the NCAA Div. II North Central Region standings. Currently, SCSU sits in the 10th spot and the Mavericks have control of the eighth spot. The top eight teams in the region make the national tournament.
"We have to get every win possible," sophomore forward Matt Siegle said. "Every win is important. We just have to go out there, win and help our chances."
Like any game in the NCC, this is not going to be easy for either team. The Mavericks are coming off a 95-86 loss to South Dakota last Friday night and 102-93 win over UNO Saturday. The win gave the Mavs its 1,000th victory in its 80-year history.
However, the Mavericks have a different look this season compared to last year when they finished 15-13 overall. The Mavericks are 15-4 in the campaign this season and have scored over 100 points in three of the last four games. MSU is led by two Div. I transfer students in 6-foot-6 guard/forward Luke Anderson (from Montana State University) and 6-foot-6 guard Jamel Staten, a transfer student from Northern Illinois University. The duo is responsible for averaging 35 points per game and are either at or near the top of every statistical category for the Mavericks. Six-foot-eight center Chris Whitfield tied MSU's 20-year-old record of blocked shots with six in the win over UNO.
"(Staten, Anderson and Whitfield) are three great players," Siegle said. "We're going to go out there and try to shut them down and compete, which we can do."
Huskies head coach Kevin Schlagel knows that in order to win, his team needs to play solid defense.
"We have to make sure defensively that we take away any easy baskets and make them work for whatever they get," he said.
On the home front, the 12-6 Huskies are coming off two NCC losses last weekend against UNO and South Dakota. Schlagel is looking to get back to basics in order to pick up a needed win. He said that he believes a key to the Huskies success will be the movement of the offense.
"We have to run our offense and set screens (to get players open)," he said. "That's something that I don't think we did a very good job of doing last weekend. I think that resulted in where we had five to six minute stretches where we had a difficult time scoring."
Schlagel said his team is void of consistency on a regular basis. The lack of consistency is something that he and assistant coach Matt Reimer had expected at the beginning of the season.
"We know we need to get consistent with our play," Schlagel said. "The weekend before last we played one of the higher-ranked teams in the nation and beat them. Then we go on the road and we didn't do as well. We need to develop some consistency."
Siegle agrees that being consistent is an important key to winning, especially at this point in the season.
"Consistency is all a part of the game," Siegle said. "Last weekend we weren't very consistent, so we just have to go out there and get it this weekend."
Due to a quirk in the league schedule this year, this will be the first of back-to-back games between the Mavericks and Huskies with the two schools slated to meet again on Feb. 7 at the Taylor Center in Mankato. To alleviate playing MSU twice in a row, the Huskies have a game scheduled Tuesday against Crossroads College.
"(The game) was done on purpose to break things up," Schlagel said. "It's unusual to play teams back-to-back like this. Hopefully things go well for us."
Playing the Gophers?
Rumor has it that the Huskies could play an exhibition game next season against the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. Schlagel said nothing has been finalized yet and does not know if the game will come to fruition or not.
"Verbally they have told us that (we're playing them)," he said. "We haven't gotten anything in writing yet."
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