IW men fry Fontbonne

MT. PLEASANT - Don't look now, but the Iowa Wesleyan men are playing their best ball of the season. The Tiger men's basketball team won its second straight SLIAC home game on Saturday, and this time it was against the second place team in the conference, Fontbonne University.

For the second straight game, IW played shut down defense, holding the Griffins to their season low in conference games this season en route to an 85-63 victory.

'I think tonight was our best defensive effort,” head coach Alex Huisman said. 'They took to heart and bought in the game plan on that end, and executed it well. The guys we didn't want to shoot the ball, we kept from getting good shots, and then the guys did a heck of a job rebounding.”

The two teams traded blows early on, but the Tigers eventually found their groove midway through the first half. After Fontbonne took an 11-10 lead with 13:10 left in the first half, IW went on an incredible 30-8 run over the next 11 minutes.

Jake Neubauer hit four three-pointers in the run. Kaleb Cresswell had three three-pointers in the last 6:33 of the half.

'Really for us, once somebody makes a shot it's going to be contagious,” Neubauer said. 'It kind of got me going shooting two free throws. Kaleb saw me score and I saw him score, and we just kept feeding off each other.”

The Tigers led 40-19 with 2:26 remaining in the half. They went into the halftime break with a 45-26 advantage.

'We were having fun, but we've also had games where we're up 20 and then end up blowing it in the second half,” said Cresswell. 'We've been a team that struggles to play all 40 minutes, and our last two games we've come out and played pretty well.”

Indeed, the Tigers kept it up in the second half. Fontbonne did cut the lead down to 12 points, but they could never get back within striking distance of the lead.

Neubauer finished the game with 24 points to lead the Tigers. He went 8-11 from the field and 6-9 from three point land. Austin Banks had 15 points and seven rebounds, and both Cresswell and Alex Dentlinger scored 14.

Alberto Torres had seven points in the win. Jarryd Fernandes finished with five points and 10 rebounds. Marvin Saintolien had five, and Robert Heise scored one.

The IW men are now 6-8 overall and 3-4 in the SLIAC. They will play three conference road games this week, today (Monday) at Greenville University, Wednesday, Jan. 22 at Webster University and Saturday, January 25 at Principia College.

Obviously Monday is going to be a tough game,” Neubauer said. 'I think we've just got to have a one game at a time kind of mentality. You can't worry about the next game, you have to win the first game first. Greenville and Webster are both ahead of us, so it would be good to go in there and get a couple good wins.”