{"id":62040,"date":"2021-11-15T08:25:50","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T14:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=62040"},"modified":"2021-11-15T08:25:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T14:25:52","slug":"mens-basketball-starts-season-with-two-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=62040","title":{"rendered":"Men’s basketball starts season with two wins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Fort Hays State defeated Southwestern Oklahoma State 70-54 on Sunday (Nov. 14) to move to 2-0 on the season. The Tigers scored the first bucket of the game and never relinquished the lead the rest of the way for the second straight game.

FHSU built an 18-point lead by halftime, 35-17, and the lead reached its peak margin of 27 in the second half on a Nyjee Wright<\/a> 3-point field goal with 10:37 to play. SWOSU scored the game’s final five points to get the margin back inside of 20.

Jared Vitztum<\/a> had a big double-double performance of 19 points and 17 rebounds, while also handing out three assists. Wright had 14 points and Geoff Hamperian<\/a> had 11 as both hit three 3-point field goals in the game. Kaleb Hammeke<\/a> provided 13 points and had a team-high four assists.

The Tigers finished with their same-exact shooting percentage from the first game, hitting 25-of-58 shots from the field (43.1 percent). FHSU had 10 3-point field goals made on Sunday compared to nine on Saturday.

Jaylan Williams led the SWOSU scoring effort with 13 points on a 5-of-9 shooting effort from the field. FHSU held SWOSU to just 32.7 percent shooting overall.

The Tigers will get a strong test in their next game when they host nationally ranked Colorado School of Mines in Hays on Thursday (Nov. 18) at 7 pm. The Orediggers were tabbed No. 5 in the NABC Preseason Top 25 Poll but have started the season 0-2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFort Hays State led wire-to-wire in a 71-59\nseason-opening win over Arkansas Tech on Saturday evening at Gross Memorial\nColiseum. The Tigers built an 11-point halftime lead and went on to win by 12.\nFHSU moved to 3-0 all-time against Arkansas Tech with the win, now with a win\nat home, on the road, and at a neutral site.

\nThe Tigers took the lead with 19:10 remaining in the opening half and never\nlooked back. They opened the game on an 11-0 run and then matched Arkansas Tech\nin points the remainder of the half to lead 34-23 at the break.

\nThe lead grew as large as 15 points in the second half, but Arkansas Tech used\na 9-0 run to cut the lead to just six with 13:07 to play. They whittled it down\nto four with 8:53 to go, but the Tigers used a 6-0 burst to get the lead back\nto double figures with seven minutes to play. From that point, they were not\nthreatened again.

Bjarni\nJonsson<\/a> provided the Tigers a big start to the season with a\ndouble-double of 17 points and 12 rebounds. He was 7-of-14 from the field and\nmade three free throws. Jared\nVitztum<\/a>, Quinten\nRock<\/a>, newcomer Geoff\nHamperian<\/a> all scored 11 each, while Nyjee\nWright<\/a> cashed in 10 and led the team with five assists.\nVitztum was just one rebound shy of a double-double.

\nThe difference in the game was the free-throw and 3-point line for FHSU. The\nTigers made nine 3-point field goals compared to six for the Wonder Boys, and\nthey made nine more free throws (12-3 advantage). Both teams shot adequate,\nFHSU at 43.1 percent and ATU at 41.7 percent\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION Fort Hays State defeated Southwestern Oklahoma State 70-54 on Sunday (Nov. 14) to move to 2-0 on the season. The Tigers… <\/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-62040","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\/62040","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=62040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62041,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62040\/revisions\/62041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}