Wildcats clutch their second straight win

The Weber State University Basketball Team’s second exhibition game brought challenges that the first didn’t. But the Wildcats still prevailed over Colorado Christian University, beating them 75-65. CCU was better defensively than Monday, Nov. 2’s opponents, the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs; they didn’t give as many open looks from the three and gave the big men more trouble in the post. Center Steve Panos and forward Kyle Bullinger were a combined 2-10 from the field. They were also able to stop Wildcat runs by putting up points of their own.
“Sometimes in these games things don’t go well and you get frustrated and start to splinter a little bit and they didn’t do that,” said Head Coach Randy Rahe. “We really hung together well and I was really pleased with that. Overall I thought it was a really good effort, especially in the second half.”
Rahe said that coming into the game he knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
“I was really impressed with the team (CCU),” Rahe said. “I knew coming in I liked the team a lot. I think that they play really hard, they execute well. I thought this was a great game for us. This is the kind of basketball we’re going to see. They’re very organized, they execute well, again, they played very hard, and they’re a very enthusiastic team. I was really impressed with them. I knew this was how it was going to be and that’s one of the reasons we scheduled them, we knew that we were going to have to play to have a chance to win.”
WSU shot 44.9 percent from the field and 39.1 percent from the three. They also shot 73.3 percent from the free-throw line, converting on 22-30. Damian Lillard had 17 points, five rebounds and four steals.
The game started out slowly, it was four minutes into the game before the Wildcats made their first basket, tying the game 3-3 off of guard junior Nick Hansen’s first of six three’s in the game and had 22 points and three assists. Junior Franklin Session, who scored 18 points and pulled in six rebounds, tantalized the crowd when he came up with a steal, threw it between the legs of a CCU player, ran the length of the floor and threw it down with one hand. Session said he wouldn’t guarantee those kinds of plays in every game.
“If it happens it happens,” Session said. “But I’m going to give it my all all year.”
At the half the Wildcats trailed 32-31, but that’s when WSU began to take control.
“They played pretty hard but towards the second half we started to match their intensity and we kind of picked it up,” Session said. We got going that way and Nick (Hansen) hit about four big shots and got that four-point play. That really made the difference in the game and that’s what started us off. That was a big play.”
According to Rahe and players, the team played better defense and focused more on rebounding in the second half. They forced turnovers and capitalized on them, scoring 19 points off of CCU turnovers in the second half. Hansen’s four-point play came with 5:23 left in the game and put WSU up 60-48.
“Sometimes things just work out for you,” Hansen said. “It was a great play by our point guard to get me open. My ball committed to him and he basically got me open. That’s what our team is about. Just always trying to get our guys open looks and they did a really good job of getting everybody open shots.”
Hansen also said that the team needs to focus on defense and rebounding in order to be successful.
“We talked a lot about defending and rebounding and that’s what we have to do night-in and night-out,” Hansen said. “We really have to focus on getting stops and putting forth the effort. They were outhustling us in the first half and we tried to step up our game in that second half and really try to get up and defend and rebound.”
Rahe said he liked the way the team handled adversity in the game.
“I told them before the game that we’re going to have to play,” Rahe said. “This is not just going to be one of those runaway type deals. There’s going to be little runs and we’re going to have to play through them. I thought our guys responded really well to that. Mentally they were very stable. There wasn’t a lot of frustration. They just kept plugging away and I thought as a team they did a really good job of just staying together.”