By Dave Melton, For The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON — At its home opener, Anderson University’s men’s basketball squad hung on for a tight 65-63 victory over the visiting Kalamazoo College Hornets Saturday night.
“I guess I’m getting used to it now,” said head coach Tom Slyder, after his team’s second straight close win to open the season. “Our guys hung in and executed a bit better down the stretch. It was a grind all night and our guys came through with some key plays at some key times. Give our guys credit; they made enough plays to win.”
Anderson held a 62-60 lead with seven seconds left, and junior forward Andrew Jones hit a pair of free throws to move the Ravens’ lead to four. Kalamazoo’s Ryan Clark hit a 3-pointer to bring the deficit back to one. On the ensuing inbound pass, though, AU attempted to pass the ball laterally along the baseline. Clark reached out-of-bounds and deflected the pass away, resulting in a technical foul against the Hornets. Junior forward Ty Riddle split the technical foul shots, and AU was able to run out the final 1.6 seconds.
“It catches teams off guard,” Slyder said of the inbound play. “It’s not designed to create a technical foul; it’s designed to inbound the ball, but they reached across the line.”
Riddle and sophomore forward Andrew Bowman led the Ravens with 17 points each. Thirteen of Bowman’s points came in the second half, and seven of those were in the final five minutes of the contest.
“At 6-foot-7, he’s the kind of guy that can put the ball on the floor and make some plays. We were able to take advantage of that tonight,” said Slyder.
Riddle scored eight points in the first half, including two three-pointers that came as the Hornets were closing the gap on the Ravens. “I thought our team did a great job of getting players the ball when they were open,” he said. “I was fortunate to have the hot hand at the time, and my team did a great job of getting me the ball.”
Riddle was playing through pain after a scramble for a loose ball early in the first half.
“A knee landed on the back of my head and my tooth bounced off the floor,” he said, adding that he got a filling right after the game and won’t miss any time. ”It was pretty sore for the rest of the game; the nerves were hanging from what was left of the tooth.”
While he said he can’t complain about the team’s 2-0 start, Slyder said that his team still had some things to work on.
“It’s about offensive execution. It’s a grind for us to score right now,” he said. “That’s enough points to hold a team to, but we’ve got to get better on offense.” He also wants his team to improve on their free throw shooting, as AU went 22-for-36 from the line.
“If we hit our free throws tonight, we probably win by double digits,” he said. “We’re a better free throw shooting team than we showed tonight.”
AU’s next game is on Tuesday night, when it will head north to take on No. 17 UW-Platteville.
