Story by MAYAN PAZ Photo by PARKER NISBETH
Tiger Media Network
Win or go home, one game at a time is the motto FHSU men’s basketball head coach Mark Johnson is going with heading into the NCAA DII Central Regional. The freshly crowned MIAA Tournament champions earned the No. 7 in the region, and are confident right now even with a low seed.
Johnson spoke about the Tigers’ first-round matchup against No.2 MSU Moorhead and the challenges they provide FHSU. The Dragons are on an 11-game win streak, which includes winning the NSIC conference tournament.
“Hopefully we can carry some of this confidence into this week playing a very good MSU Moorhead team. Division II with regionalization is so goofy. I mean, we’re playing a team that you might be facing in the national quarter-finals or semi-finals – they are that good,” Johnson said. “So it’ll be a big test. They’re huge, they have a 7-foot-1-inch center, and then they have four 6-foot-7-inch guys, so it’ll be a real challenge for us physically. We’re playing arguably the hottest team in America, so we’ll have to be at our best.”
The regional system divides the teams in the national tournament according to their geographical location, and the Central Regional is one of the toughest in the nation. The highest-ranked team in that region is Washburn, who will host the regional tournament in Topeka.
The cornerstone of the Tigers’ success this season was their defense. Fort Hays has the best-scoring defense in the country, allowing only 59.6 points per game. With the MIAA championship on their resume, they will now try to keep up the defensive effort into the national tournament.
Johnson said what helps make their defense successful is when FHSU can limit transition scoring and second-chance points.
“We want them to have to face our half-court defense over and over. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a fast team or a slow team. We can’t give up transition baskets, can’t give up second-chance points,” he said. “You do that, and they have to play against your half-court defense for 40 minutes. It’s hard to put up a lot of points.”
Another area Johnson emphasized was taking care of the ball and limiting turnovers.
“We did a great job this time around against Central Oklahoma in the Championship game. We really took care of the ball. We have to continue to limit our turnovers and then do what we did last weekend,” he said. “We have to be able to make open shots at a higher level than maybe we have all seen all season long, and we were able to do that in the conference tournament.”
Winning the MIAA tournament gave the Tigers an automatic ticket to the national tournament when otherwise they were not guaranteed to be accepted into the field. FHSU leading scorer and MIAA Tournament Most Valuable Player Kaleb Hammeke spoke about the need to regroup and focus after the thrilling win.
“A big reason that we wanted to win that tournament was to make the NCAA tournament. We knew we needed to win it to be in this tournament this weekend. So, part one of the job is done. We set ourselves up to go to the tournament, and now it’s just regrouping,” he said. “We know how good we can play. We know what we need to do to win. We know what it takes to win in big games like that. So we’ll be ready to go. We’ll get a few good practices and be ready to go Saturday.”
With the size difference between the Dragons and Tigers, this is going to be a unique challenge for the Tigers’ defense; however, senior forward Shaun Riley is ready to face the challenge.
“We’ll probably just get more transition, usually, most of the time [the] bigger the big men means they’re kind of slower on a fast break, so probably just get out more on the run, and that will probably just lead us to success,” Riley said. “We need to stick to what we do. Be tough, be defensively sound, be smart, and execute everything that we want to do, and hopefully, that gives us a win.”
Winona State or Southwest Minnesota State will face the winner of FHSU and MSU Moorhead. The first round of the regional will be played on Saturday in Topeka, while the second round games will be on Sunday. The regional final will be on Tuesday evening.
The Tigers and Dragons tip off at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow. The game can be viewed on the MIAA Network.