Yellowjackets Topple School Scoring Record – Route
Mustangs (February 1, 2003)
BILLINGS, MT – Seven years to
the day after the MSU Billings men’s basketball team
set a school and PacWest Conference scoring record
in a 141-114 win over Alaska-Anchorage, they set a
new record in a 146-73 route of Western New Mexico.
And on a night of records, guard Willy Davison led the charge.
Davison, a senior from
Ballantine, Montana, guided the Yellowjackets’
breakneck pace with a career-high 30 points and 11
assists. The 11 assists tied a career-high set last
week in a win over Hawaii Pacific. The 30 points,
on 10-of-15 shooting from the field and 4-of-7 from
behind the arc, almost doubled his previous
career-best of 17.
“I didn’t think I had even
close to 30,” said Davison. “I was just trying to
play the game and if a shot was open, I took the
opening.”
Despite the record scoring
outburst, the game started with a slow, grinding
pace. Three 3-pointers by the Mustangs, including
two from Joey Ramirez, kept the score close in the
first five minutes. Ramirez finished with a
team-high 19 points.
Ramirez’s second triple at
15:26 of the first half tied the score at 9-9.
That’s just about the time the question of win or
lose became moot and the only detail left to be
decided was how many points the Yellowjackets would
score, even if the players and coaches didn’t
realize it at the time.
“We didn’t talk about that
until there were maybe five minutes left in the
game” said Davison of the school record. “At
halftime, we just focused on pushing ourselves
harder. When we got tired, we just wanted to keep
pushing ourselves. Our focus after the first game
(with Western New Mexico on Thursday) was defense.
We tried to turn defense into offense. Defense was
our focus all week.”
That focus paid huge dividends
as the Yellowjackets’ pressing defense did lead to
offense, and a lot of it. A 19-5 Yellowjacket run
between 10:16 and 5:53 blew open the game as MSUB
went ahead 43-23. The Mustangs committed three of
their 33 turnovers during that stretch, leaving
Davison to force the tempo on the fast break.
The next five and a half
minutes were just as hectic as MSU Billings forged a
65-33 halftime lead. Davison either scored or
assisted in 15 of the Jackets’ final 20 points of
the first half.
Western New Mexico, which fell
to 3-15 and 1-7 in the PacWest, hardly answered the
bell for the second half, arriving on the court just
as the horn sounded ending the halftime. As omens
go, it wasn’t a good one for the Mustangs. They
shot just 46 percent from the field in the second
half, including 2-of-10 from 3-point range.
A basket by senior center Kyle Stirmlinger just eight seconds into
the half gave MSUB a 34-point lead, and that was as
close as the Mustangs would be the rest of the
night. MSU Billings shot a blistering 61 percent
from the floor in the game, connecting on 17-of-33
three point attempts (45 percent). Playing with
just eight players because of a string of injuries,
the Jackets just might have found their new identity
Saturday night.
Even though the Yellowjackets’
nucleus is still comprised of their three seniors,
the team’s new cast members played large rolls in
Saturday’s production. Junior transfer Justin Hassell had a season-high 26
points and also pulled down six rebounds. Bill Day, a junior transfer, and Cameron Munoz, a true freshman, each
added 18 points.
Added to the 21 points and
eight rebounds of senior Dan Thompson, and Stirmlinger’s 15 points
and five rebounds, the result was a school record
and building block for the stretch run of the
conference race. With the win, the Yellowjackets
improve to 10-6 overall and 4-4 in the PacWest with
seven conference games remaining.
“We’ve talked about everything
happening for a reason,” said Davison of defending
the PacWest title while missing key players. “We
just try to take it one day at a time because we
know some of our teammates haven’t had a tomorrow.”
When the eight remaining
Yellowjackets wake up tomorrow, they will find
themselves back in the middle of the PacWest title
hunt. |
