The Daily Dive is your deep dive into the news and notes from around the NAIA Hoops World. Every day we will highlight some of the top headlines, conference updates, player accolades, coaching milestones and more. This used to be our Morning Bullet Points series. We went away from it this year, as others were doing similar things and we didn’t want to step on any toes. At the request of many, we have elected to bring it back for the second half of the season. Feel free to DM us on Twitter (@NAIAHoopsReport) or send an email to naiahoopsreport@gmail.com to recommend stories to be included into this segment.
We had FOUR ranked teams go down yesterday as #3, #10, #20 and #22 all fell victim to upsets. For those raters who held off their rankings until after tonight’s games, it will be interesting to see where some of these teams end up! The fun part of this season is that with all the games that were postponed and/or teams not starting to play games until January, it has made for a lot more days each week that are packed with games. Other than Friday’s and Sunday’s, each and every day this semester has a healthy serving of games to watch!
Review of our Games of the Day:
20 Saint Francis 71 @ Grace 72 (Full Recap)
Cade Gibbs went for 24 points and the game winner as Grace gets their 2nd Top 25 win in their last two games. The Freshman Gibbs tied for the game high in points with Jeffrey Reynolds of Saint Francis. Reynolds finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds in the loss.
RV Oklahoma Wesleyan 62 @ Avila 53 (Full Recap)
Oklahoma Wesleyan got a big KCAC road win over Avila to stay in 2nd place. OKWU got 13pts from Brooks Haddock and 12pts, 12reb double-double from Kaleb Stokes. Brandon Phillips led Avila with 20pts in the loss.
Wayland Baptist 93 @ #22 SAGU 83 OT (Full Recap)
Wayland Baptist may have found themselves something special in Freshman Chris Advent.
Other Notable Scores:
Grace wasn’t the only team to get a buzzer beater win over a Top 25 opponent. Huntington (IN) went into #10 Marian and won 73-71!
#3 MACU dropped their 2nd straight contest, as they move to 0-1 in Sooner Athletic Conference play with an 80-77 OT loss to Southwestern Christian. SCU Head Coach Brandon Rollins gets a nice win over his former boss.
Top Performances:
Peyton Sallee had himself a day going 9-10 from the 3pt line on his way to 29pts.
Fred Watts of McPherson also had an impressive performance last night, nearly missing a double-double with 26pts, 9reb.
Troy Baker of Southwestern (KS) had 27pts and 9 rebounds in their win against Sterling.
Reigning Heart of America Player of the Week Rodrigue Marthone of Park (MO) nearly had a triple-double as he went off for 27pts, 8reb and 7assts in their win over Baker.
Another full day of games today! We will have our Schedule and Links page out later this morning! The conference polls were also supposed to be out yesterday, but haven’t been posted yet. Once they are out we will post the link on Twitter for everyone to see! They are always fun to look at prior to the Top 25 being released tomorrow!
