Fort Lewis College men’s basketball won their opening game in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament against University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Tuesday night at home 92-85 after being down at halftime by 14 points.
The Cougars came into this game as the #7 seed in the tournament after going 12-15, 11-11 in the RMAC, in the regular season. The Skyhawks came into this game trending downward late in the season after losing two out of their last three games and losing the RMAC to Mines late in the season. The Skyhawks did finish their season with an outstanding 23-5, 18-4 in RMAC, record.
The game was all UCCS in the first half with the cougars holding a 14-point lead going into halftime at 49-35.
UCCS shot an astounding 58.3 percent from the field in the first half and outrebounded the Skyhawks 21-12 with nine of those being offensive rebounds for the Cougars.
FLC senior Joshua Blaylock led all scorers in the first-half with 13 points. The surprise in the first-half though was that the leading scorers for the Cougars were sophomores Ian McDonald and Dalton Walker, who led the Cougars with 12 and 10 points respectively in the first half after only averaging 5.1 and 3.0 points over the course of the season.
At halftime, Skyhawk head coach Bob Pietrack had some choice words for his players.
“I was really pissed,” Pietrack said after the game. “I’ve never been that mad in my whole life and I didn’t even talk about the game. You can’t coach if no one is playing hard. When someone is playing hard, it’s just like teaching. If they are engaged, you can do it, otherwise it doesn’t matter what you say.”
The coaches have the pulse of this teams heart and they knew that they would respond in the second half, Pietrack said.
The Skyhawks came out of halftime with a lot more energy than they did in the first half, narrowing the lead to four points just six minutes into the second half. The Skyhawks began on a 17-7 run to start the final 20 minutes of regulation.
The game started getting a bit chippy with about 12 minutes left in regulation when Skyhawk Kane Martinez picked up a flagrant-one foul by tripping UCCS’s TreShawn Wilford after Martinez turned the ball over.
FLC came back to tie the game at 60 with 11:37 left in regulation and that is when the real game began.
FLC took their first lead since the 14:40 in the first half when junior Daniel Hernandez nailed a huge step-back 3-pointer with about 9:33 left in the second.
The game was a back and forth battle down the stretch, with both teams trading leads and trading buckets. The score was tied 12 times and the lead had changed five times with 3:56 remaining in the second half.
The Skyhawks closed their final home game of the season on a 14-9 run to close out the victory and move onto the next round in the RMAC tournament. Blaylock scored 20 points in the second half and also dished out a few nice assists to Hernandez and Alex Semadeni, who hit key shots down the stretch to help seal the victory.
“I wanted this so bad,” Blaylock said. “Man, I did not want to go out like that being a senior. I want to keep going and get to Colorado Mines and just get a chance so, I wanted it bad.”
Blaylock finished with a game-high 33 points in the victory. After the game, Pietrack had nothing but praise for his leading scorer and leader in Blaylock.
“I’ve been here 17 years, I didn’t see anything pre-2000,” Pietrack said. “We have had a lot of great players, I can name them all, I have seen them all and it’s hard to judge one better than the other in different eras but, man, Josh is so damn good. And he wasn’t going to let us lose tonight.”
Hernandez ended the game with 16 points, nine of which came from behind the arc and really stepped up with senior Will Morse and junior Rasmus Bach both sick with illness’ going into the game.
“It’s good to help the team win,” Hernandez said. “We have will out right now so I have to really step up and distribute the ball as well as score a little bit more.”
No. 2 seeded Fort Lewis will play Friday evening against No. 6 seeded Colorado Christian University, who beat no. 3 seeded CSU-Pueblo Tuesday night 54-52, in Golden, Colo. at 5 p.m. in the semifinal round.