By MAYAN PAZ
Tiger Media Network
After four games on the road, FHSU men’s basketball is back home for two crucial games this weekend against Northeastern State and Arkansas-Fort Smith in games that might determine the future of the Tiger season.
“We can’t lose at home,” said graduate guard Kaleb Hammeke. “We’ve got to defend our home court. From here on out, we’ve got to win games. We’ve got to make sure that we are winning every game and are ready to play every night and come out and do the best we can.”
Last week, FHSU (13-7, 6-5) dropped a pair of games to Washburn and Central Missouri, which moved the Tigers to No. 6 in the MIAA standings. Kyle Grill led the Tigers against No. 1 and undefeated Washburn, scoring a career-high 25 points; however, poor marks from the free throw line (11-19) and three-point line (6-20) helped the Ichabods prevail 75-65.
“We handled their pressure and their traps pretty well. We turned it over nine times, and we prepared for it, and our guys really handled it well. We scored at a pretty good rate and guarded pretty well,” said FHSU Head Coach Mark Johnson. “The biggest thing that got us in trouble was our free throws, which weren’t very good. We missed too many free throws. We would have made shots a little better, had some free throws, and had a couple more threes. I really think we would have had a great opportunity. But our guys handled the pressure and played fairly well.”
The Tigers continued to struggle with scoring in their game against Central Missouri. A game between two strong defensive teams ended with an unusual score of 41-31 in favor of the Mules, as the Tigers went just 1-15 from three and 10-50 from the field with only two assists the entire game.
While disappointed, Johnson was able to see some positives and is ready to move on from that performance.
“Against Central Missouri, I thought we were a little fatigued. I thought we were physically playing hard and competing; that’s why we held them to 41 points. I felt like you could tell a little bit mentally we weren’t quite as sharp. I think we left a lot of it out there at Washburn,” he said. “The biggest thing is, defensively, I think we’re number one in the country, and Central Missouri is number two. So you had the top two in the country, not just the MIAA. You had two great defensive teams playing against two teams that struggled a little bit offensively.”
Two great defenses paired with unusually low shooting performances made for a challenging situation for FHSU to overcome.
“Then we were 1-15 from three, and it was just a perfect storm. I mean, we were terrible. We were terrible, terrible, terrible offensively,” Johnson said. “Obviously, give Central Missouri a little bit of credit. That’s what they’re really good at: making it hard on you. And then we were just bad. I don’t think we were playing selfishly, it was more a problem of taking bad shots and running bad offense at times. So a disappointing performance overall.”
The Tigers will face two teams that play very differently from Central Missouri on the offense. Northeastern State (13-7, 7-4) is averaging 81.1 points per game, and Arkansas-Fort Smith (8-12, 2-9) averages 78 points per contest.
Johnson said he hopes the different styles of play will help his players to become looser and find their offensive groove again.
Fort Hays State and Northeastern State tip off at 7:30 p.m. tonight. FHSU and UAFS play at 4 p.m. on Saturday.