Men's Basketball Comes Back from 17 to Earn First Win of the Year

LANSING, Mich- Great Lakes Christian College Men's Basketball team played their second game in as many days. This time they traveled to Ohio Christian in Circleville, Ohio. The Crusaders started off slow as the Trailblazers jumped out to an 11-0 lead. GLCC would respond with a 7-0 run. OCU would respond with strong offense and build their lead as much as 17 points before Coach Westerlund would take a timeout to refocus the guys. The Crusaders would move to a 2-3 zone and that would pay off dividends for GLCC as they would begin to chip away. GLCC was able to close the half down just eight points.

In the second half Crusaders would continue to chip away and really clamped down defensively in the second half. The Crusaders would hold OCU to just 28 percent shooting and 18 percent from the three point line in the second half. Carlo Bass and Michael Hill provided great energy off the bench to spark the Crusaders to complete the comeback and take the lead late against OCU. Trent Temple and Whitney Harris combined for 45 points shooting a combined 16/26 from the field and 4/8 from three. Isiah Reed chipped in a solid 14 points and 7 assists on the night.  GLCC would go on to win 85-77 for the first win of the campaign.

Inside the Box Score:

• GLCC would shoot 51 percent from the floor for the game including a blistering 59 percent in the second half
• Crusaders would force the Trailblazers into 18 turnovers
• OCU held the rebounding advantage 37-30.
• GLCC would hit 17/23 free throws on the game
• Whitney Harris finished with 24 points and 3 rebounds for the game.

What Coach Says:

"This was not a pretty win by any means, but we were fortunate to get a win tonight. We are still learning to play a complete forty minutes. I think this group has a chance to be really special when we can learn that. I really loved that we had so many different guys step up throughout the game. I thought we had so many guys give us such valuable minutes off the bench which was huge." On 2-3 zone call, "We were struggling defensively tonight in our man to man, I wanted to try to see if something different could spark us. The guys did a great job making the adjustments on the fly and competing in our 2-3." On what's next, "We go to Rio Grande and we play a very good Rio Grande team and top 25 caliber Shawnee State this weekend. I am happy we get a day of rest but we got our hands full this weekend. We will need to continue to improve and change our best."

What's Next: Men's Basketball will take on Rio Grande at Rio, Friday at 8:00p