The hysteria of the comeback win turned to something resembling heavy-heartedness after a fourth in-conference loss for men’s basketball on Jan. 24.
On Jan. 21, the Pioneers overcame a 12-point defecit in the second half, going on a 20-1 run to beat Oral Roberts University 73-66.
“For our guys to stay with-it says, I think, they’re starting to get it,” said head coach Joe Scott. “Did you ever see a better seven minutes than that?”
Following a sloppy first half that saw 16 total turnovers, Oral Roberts opened the second half with a 7-2 run. Juniors Nate Engesser and Jalen Love turned the tide in favor of the Pios, hitting back-to-back threes in the last seven minutes to pull within four of the Golden Eagles.
Three days later the Pios dropped an 80-69 road decision to the University of Nebraska Omaha.
Junior guard Bryant Rucker led the Pioneers with his season-high 14 points. The Mavericks sit at second-to-last place in the Summit League, while the Pioneers dropped to 9-11 overall, 3-4 in conference play.
Scott and the team survived a similar ebb-and-flow schedule earlier in the 2014-2015 season.
“Two weeks ago we had a bad week,” Scott said. “We lost three in a row. The week started bad and it ended bad. We’ve been playing for 50 days and we just had a bad six [days]. We got another 50 days after. It’s not about the six. It’s not about the bad week.”
The Pios rattled off two wins at the end of December, before dropping three straight in conference battles.
“You gotta learn that it’s a season. There are ups and downs in a season. It’s about getting better at what we do,” Scott said. “It’s called the maturity of a team. A team coming together and gelling, and I do see that from our guys.”
Freshman centers Daniel Amigo and Christian Mackey seem to be doing some maturing on their own, as well. Amigo came up with four key free throws to solidify the comeback win over Oral Roberts and Mackey grabbed two offensive rebounds down the stretch.
“What I like about those two big guys is that they play like big guys,” Scott said. “They knock other guys down on the ground. They get rebounds, they change shots, they do the things that we need them to do.”
The Pioneers head to north to play North Dakota State on Jan. 29 for the first time this season. North Dakota State enjoyed the conference’s automatic-NCAA Tournament bid after winning the Summit League last year.
