FHSU Sports Information Department<\/p>\n
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. \u2013 Fort Hays State had a 10-point halftime lead, but quickly saw it evaporate early in the second half and battled past a hot 3-point shooting Northeastern State team, 87-84, on Thursday night (Feb. 25). The win locked up a first-round bye in the MIAA Tournament and vaulted the Tigers into a tie for second place in the conference standings.<\/p>\n
Fort Hays State never trailed in the first half and used a 14-0 run to build a 14-point lead of 26-12 midway through the first half. The lead hit 14 once more in the first half before settling at 10 by halftime, 47-37.<\/p>\n
The turning point in the game happened only a minute into the second half. FHSU scored the opening bucket of the second half to go up 12, but then Northeastern State had a little luck go its way in building an 8-0 run and cutting the lead down to four in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
Craig Nicholson made a good defensive play, stripping the ball loose, but straight to an NSU player that was in the right place at the right time who buried a jumper. As the ball went through the net, FHSU’s Jake Stoppel was whistled for a foul. NSU got the ball back, made a layup, then FHSU turned the ball over twice in a row leading to easy buckets and the lead was instantly down to four with just under 18 minutes to play in the game.<\/p>\n
Rob Davis and Dom Samac briefly countered the run with a pair of 3-point field goals, pushing the Tiger cushion back to 10, but then Northeastern State caught fire from 3-point range. The RiverHawks would go on to bury nine 3-point field goals over the final 16:11 of the game. NSU finally caught the Tigers at the 8:01 mark on the sixth of those nine 3-point field goals, tying the game 67-67.<\/p>\n
The RiverHawks led by two twice before FHSU fought back with a 5-0 burst to take a 75-72 lead. But once again, an NSU 3-pointer tied the game at 77-77 with 1:16 to play.<\/p>\n
Nicholson had the key play for FHSU with 51 seconds remaining, driving to the hoop and getting an old-fashioned 3-point play by drawing a foul. After NSU missed a shot, Davis headed to the line and buried two free-throws to put the Tigers up five. Hadley Gillum hit three of four free-throws down the stretch to keep the Tigers in front by two posessions, but an NSU 3-point field goal with 0.7 seconds left cut the lead to one. The RiverHawks fouled without any time coming off the clock, but Stoppel calmly knocked down a pair to give the Tigers the 87-84 win as a long desperation attempt by NSU fell off the mark.<\/p>\n
Davis and Samac led the Tigers in scoring with 18 points each, while Gillum scored a career-high 14 and Nicholson added 11. Gillum led the Tigers in rebounds with seven. FHSU shot 54 percent from the field, including 47.4 percent beyond the 3-point line, to overcome 19 turnovers in the game.<\/p>\n
Northeastern State buried a total of 12 3-point field goals in the game. Tanner Mouse and Montre’ Williams led the RiverHawks in scoring with 16 points each. Mouse led the 3-point shooting effort by hitting four.<\/p>\n
The Tigers can now finish anywhere between second and fourth in the MIAA standings, pending results on Saturday (Feb. 27). FHSU is currently tied for second with Nebraska-Kearney and Missouri Southern. UNK plays at Northeastern State, while Missouri Southern hosts Pittsburg State. The Tigers play at Central Oklahoma with tip off set for 3:30 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FHSU Sports Information Department TAHLEQUAH, Okla. \u2013 Fort Hays State had a 10-point halftime lead, but quickly saw it evaporate early in the second half… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Tigers Win Thriller at Northeastern State, 87-84; Secure Bye in MIAA Tournament","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3394,7349],"tags":[6818,208,3466,106,2926],"class_list":["post-25740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mens-basketball-sports","category-sports","tag-roartigers","tag-central-oklahoma","tag-fhsu-mens-basketball","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-northeastern-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25741,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25740\/revisions\/25741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}