{"id":53642,"date":"2020-02-24T08:14:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T14:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=53642"},"modified":"2020-02-24T08:14:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T14:14:13","slug":"tigers-race-by-riverhawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=53642","title":{"rendered":"Tigers race by RiverHawks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Hays State Men’s Basketball improved its chances at a berth in the MIAA Tournament with an 87-80 comeback win over Northeastern State on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 22) at Gross Memorial Coliseum. A 19-0 second half run by the Tigers ultimately shifted the tide of the game in their favor as they held on down the stretch for a much-needed conference victory. FHSU is now 13-13 overall and 6-11 in the MIAA, while NSU moved to 17-10 overall and 10-8 in the MIAA.

The Tigers fought a big uphill battle in the first half, falling down by 16 with 7:47 remaining before halftime. However, the Tigers began to chip away at the big RiverHawk lead, cutting the deficit down to five before a 3-point field goal at the halftime horn pushed the margin back to eight, 41-33.

Down 48-40 with 15:30 remaining in the game, the Tigers started their tremendous second-half run. Jared Vitztum<\/a> triggered the run with an old-fashioned 3-point play to get the lead down to five. The Tigers picked up stops on the next two NSU possessions and countered with a pair of free throws from Nyjee Wright<\/a>, and then a game-tying 3-point field goal by Jake Hutchings<\/a> at 14:05 remaining.

The Tigers continued to push, getting another stop on the defensive end and then Devin Davis<\/a> countered with an old-fashioned 3-point play. FHSU led 51-48, its first lead since a pair of one-point margins at 7-6 and 9-8 in the first half. Two more misses by the RiverHawks led to back-to-back 3-point field goals, both by Vitztum to extend the lead to nine. Jake Hutchings<\/a> finally capped the run with a layup at the 10:21 mark. In just over five minutes time, the Tigers went on a 19-0 run to make an eight-point deficit an 11-point lead. FHSU held NSU to 0-of-5 shooting in the run, while forcing two turnovers. FHSU shot 6-of-7 from the field in the run, including 3-of-4 beyond the 3-point line .

Northeastern State shortly stopped the bleeding with a field goal at the 10:43 mark, but FHSU kept pulling further ahead. A 14-6 run pushed the Tiger advantage to 17 with 5:21 to play, but the RiverHawks tried their best to climb back in the game. Somewhat shaky free-throw shooting down the stretch by FHSU led NSU continue to chip away, cutting the lead all the way down to five with three seconds remaining before a pair of free throws from Wright pushed the final margin back to seven.

Vitztum topped his career high in points set a week ago at Lincoln, going one better with 25. Hutchings added 18, Perry Carroll<\/a> had 13 off the bench, and Davis and Wright had 11. All of Wright’s 11 points were on free throws. FHSU shot 50 percent as a team for the game, including a scorching 60 percent after halftime. The Tigers hit 21-of-32 free-throw attempts.

Caleb Smith led the RiverHawks with 26 points, followed by Kendrick Thompson with 16.

The Tigers remain in a tie for ninth in the MIAA standings, now with Central Oklahoma both at 6-11. Central Missouri and Pittsburg State are both one game back at 5-12. Fort Hays State’s game on Thursday (Feb. 27) at Central Oklahoma will be critical in trying to lock up a spot in Kansas City for the MIAA Tournament. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION Fort Hays State Men’s Basketball improved its chances at a berth in the MIAA Tournament with an 87-80 comeback win over… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":"","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":[],"class_list":["post-53642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mens-basketball-sports","category-sports"],"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\/53642","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53643,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53642\/revisions\/53643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}