- Good Morning NAIA Hoops Nation!! Quite the eventful evening we had around the NAIA Hoops world last night. Triple-doubles, single game scoring records, 100 career coaching wins, and plenty more. We will get to it all, but first we will start with a recap of our circled games from last night!
- In NAIA DI action, we had the #21 Central Baptist (AR) at Missouri Baptist game as one of our two DI circled games. The American Midwest Conference race is heating up, and Missouri Baptist needed a big bounce back win after a bad loss to Hannibal-Lagrange. Missouri Baptist answered the bell with the 72-61 win. John Yaeger led the way for the Spartans with 18 points. There are now six teams within ONE game of 1st place, and seven teams within two games. This will be an interesting race to follow the rest of the way.
- The 2nd DI game we had circled for last night featured a Top 25 matchup out in the Mid-South Conference a #14 Pikeville lost at #16 Cumberlands (KY) 62-71. Tevin Olison once again had a big night for the Pioneers as he finished with 21 points in the win. With the win Cumberlands remains a game back of 1st place behind Georgetown, and will look to finish off a big week on Saturday when they host #25 Shawnee State. After losing 4 straight, and 5 of their last 6 games, Pikeville will get a bit of a breather as they host non NAIA member Carver on Saturday.
- In NAIA DII action last night we circled a big game out in the KCAC between McPherson and Southwestern, as the two teams both fight to stay in the regular season championship hunt. Southwestern ended up with the 88-85 win, and after a slow start to the conference season, have now won 10 of their last 12 conference games and find themselves 2.5 games back of #7 Ottawa. McPherson is now 1.5 games back after the loss.
- Our last circled game of the evening came from the River States Conference, where West Virginia Tech beat Midway 81-59. Midway, came into the contest winners of 5 of the last 6 games, and is currently the 3rd seed in the West Division, while WVU holds a half game lead in the East. 1st year coach James Long has done a tremendous job at thus far at WVU Tech, and has his squad playing some great basketball right now.
- As mentioned in the opener, there were a lot of big performances last night. A big congratulations to all of the players and coaches below on hitting their milestones!
- Deshawn Munson of Harris-Stowe continued his great season with his 5th Triple-Double of the season as HSSU beat Columbia College.
- Darryl Bowie broke the Ottawa single game scoring record last night with a 46 point performance to help Ottawa get the win.
- Ave Maria broke a school record with 25 made 3’s in last nights win over Coastal Georgia. Leo Behrend continued his great season with a 31 point performance that also made him a member of the 1K scoring club!
- Josh Hauser of Cal-Meritime also joined the 1K Club last night!!
- Coach Starr at The Master’s picked up his 100th win last night.
- Also picking up his 100th career coaching win was Coach Beschta at John Brown University.
- Congrats again to all of the players and coaches above! A truly eventful night all across the country!
- As we do from time to time, we will leave you with a couple impressive plays from last nights games:
- Great play design by Dordt on this game winner last night!
