Index of Sports Press Releases

Mar. 12, 2008

DWU men's basketball team faces unfamiliar opponent
today in national tournament
Matt Higgins • The Daily Republic

POINT LOOKOUT, Mo. — After almost two months of playing Great Plains Conference teams exclusively, the Dakota Wesleyan University men’s basketball team is used to having at least a degree of familiarity with the opposition.

However, that won’t be the case for the Tigers — or almost anyone else — when the NAIA Division II national tournament begins today. DWU opens against an unfamiliar opponent, Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, Mich.), today with a 10:15 a.m. tip off. This year’s tournament site is Keeter Gymnasium on the College of the Ozarks Campus in Point Lookout, Mo., which is near Branson.

“We haven’t seen anything of Aquinas yet, other than a couple verbal scouting reports I’ve done over the phone,” said Tigers’ head coach John Hemenway. “We’ve just been focusing on us, getting back on shape and focusing on our team.”

“There are a lot of unknowns down there. You don’t know a lot about the teams you’re playing.”

“It’s tough” added forward Scott Nelson. “You’ll get your scouting report, but other than that you might have some teams come in and do some things you haven’t seen before.”

At least the tournament itself is no longer one of the unknowns DWU will face. The Tigers also played in last year’s championships in the exact same location.

“We’ll know the lay of the land, the gym, the setting, the environment,” Hemenway said. “Last year everything was just so new to us. We didn’t know what the atmosphere was going to be like. …This year we’ll be aware of some of those little things.”

As far as Aquinas goes, the first thing that stands out is its record. Both the Tigers and Saints have identical 24-8 records and the similarities don’t stop there. Neither team is particularly big, both have good players on the perimeter and both shoot 48 percent from the floor.

Each team is also undefeated on a neutral court — Aquinas is 7-0 and the Tigers are 2-0 when there’s no true home team — and the first-round opponents share only one common opponent this season. Aquinas split a pair of games with Siena Heights University and DWU beat Siena Heights, 81-75, at the St. Xavier tournament in Chicago on Dec. 19.

“They’re not real big,” Nelson said. “We should be bigger and do well on the glass. They’re good shooters. We’ll have to get hands up on their shots and get some rebounds.”

Aquinas isn’t quite as fast-paced as DWU. The Saints average 74.3 points per game while DWU is at an even 83 ppg. However, Aquinas gets a lot of its scoring from behind the three-point arc. The Saints shoot threes at a .397 clip and make nearly eight per game.

“The big thing with these guys is they really shoot the ball well form the perimeter,” Hemenway said. “We’re going to have to be on shooters. We’re going to have to cover these guys up.”

John Lierman is one of those three-point shooters. The sophomore guard leads Aquinas with 15.9 ppg, and he makes 44 percent of his threes to go along with 6.8 rebounds per game. Junior forward Peja Lazic is the Saints’ inside threat with an average of 14.3 ppg and 7.2 rpg. Senior guard James Telman also averages in double figures with 12.8 ppg and senior forward/guard Jeff Wierzbicki chips in with 9.8 ppg and a team-high 7.3 rpg. Junior guard Jordan Torres is the fifth starter, and that combination has started all 32 games.

“They’re not real big,” Hemenway said. “They do have a 6-6 post kid (Lazic) who is a very good scorer, but other than that they’re a similar size to us. I’ve been told they’re not overly athletic, which is good for us because I think we’re a fairly athletic team. I think we match up well with them and they probably think they match up pretty well with us.”

One area where DWU should have a clear advantage is depth. All five starters have at least 850 minutes for Aquinas this season, but no one else on the team has even played 450 minutes. On the flip side, eight Tigers average at least 18 minutes per game.

“We’re pretty deep and that should help us,” Nelson said. “If they take one guy away, someone else can step up. Depth will help us out a ton.”

“We’ve had a lot of different guys step up on different nights,” Hemenway said.

Other than a few key pieces, this is largely a different DWU team than the one that lost in the first round a year ago on a last-second free throw to Mount Vernon Nazarene (Ohio). Point guard Andrew Lasche, swingman Marcus Vontz and recently crowned GPAC player of the year Preston Broughton all played significant minutes in Point Lookout a year ago, and backup point guard Rocky Nelson also made the trip. However, transfers Colby Fitzgerald, Ike Muoneke and Nelson and freshmen Brady Wiebe and Chase Walder are new to the national tournament.

Despite the roster turnover, DWU is proud of what it has accomplished this year, and even a little surprised at how well the five new guys meshed with the four holdovers.

“I think we were all pretty excited about everything we did,” Lasche said. “We were pretty much awed. This time we have a lot of guys that haven’t been down there and we have some freshmen so it will be fun. … We told them it’s going to be pretty exciting, but you have to keep your head and think of it just as another game when we get there.”

The Tigers players and coaches continuously talk about how well the team came together this season to earn the fifth at-large bid into the tournament. Somehow, Hemenway was able to mix the perfect blend of talents and personalities and the result has been a memorable season.

“To come together this quickly and this well, it’s been great,” Hemenway said. “This group has really come together well and they’ve been great to coach.”

However, DWU isn’t done quite yet. Despite a 10-day layoff since their last game, the Tigers went hard in practice for three days before leaving for Branson on Monday, and Hemenway has a feeling his team will be ready Wednesday at 10:15 a.m.

“I just think we’ll come out and play well,” he said. “I think the guys have waited for this. We’ve had our eye on this. …We wanted to be a top-25 team and get back to the national tournament and we’ve done that.

“I have a good feeling about Wednesday. I think we’ll play well down there.”