Poor-shooting Buffs stumble versus
Lions
By Matt Hill
STAR STAFF
mhill@starhq.com
After shooting 36 percent from the
field and 47 percent from the foul line, The Milligan College
Buffaloes might have been lucky to still have a chance to
win at the end of Saturday night's game against Bryan College.
They didn't have that much luck.
A missed three-pointer by Marc Curry
in the final seconds prevented the Buffaloes from tying the
contest, as Bryan went on to win 62-57 at Steve Lacy Fieldhouse.
In the end, the Buffaloes were scratching
their heads about all the missed opportunities.
"We're lucky," Milligan head coach
Tony Wallingford said. "This just shows how hard the guys
worked at times out there just to make a game of it, shooting
that poorly. You've got to put the ball through the hoop to
bring up the scoreboard and win games. We shot poorly and
we still had a chance to win."
Milligan had a golden opportunity
late in the contest after a missed free-throw by Jonathan
Little gave the Buffaloes 14.8 seconds to make something happen.
They did, sort of.
Jordan Simmons put up a three-pointer
with 9.9 seconds left that went in, but there was only one
problem. A timeout had just been called by the Buffaloes.
After the timeout, Simmons found
Curry for a three-point attempt, but it wasn't meant to be.
Bryan's Josh Locy came up with rebound and was fouled.
Locy hit two foul shots, and that
iced the contest for Bryan.
After the shot, Wallingford was visibly
upset about the play.
Wallingford was a little more relaxed
a few minutes later when talking about Milligan's final possession,
but it still wasn't what he wanted.
"We had Mike (Morrell) coming off
of player screen on the back. But Jordan made a read, and
just went with an open guy in the corner. He had a good look
at a three," Wallingford said. "It's not like we didn't get
a shot. It's not necessarily what we drew up, but that doesn't
mean we didn't get a good look at it. We just missed it."
As for the play where timeout was
called right when Simmons was shooting what would have been
the game-tying trey, Wallingford feels he did the right thing.
"We went on a previous situation
at home here, where it was a similar situation, them at the
line, x amount of seconds, and we came down and we like to
play open court. We don't like to stop and set up and let
them set their defense," Wallingford said. "We practice last
second situations. The last game that this occurred, we came
down and we looked unorganized, and we took a bad shot. This
time I said, we're not going to do that again. I said we're
going to try and set something and get a good look here.
"That was the decision we made. We
wanted to make it when we got to half-court. So Jordan got
one up and knocked it down, but we had called a timeout. That's
kind of the way the ball bounced for us tonight."
Even though the ball didn't bounce
Milligan's way in the last 15 seconds, Wallingford believes
that the Buffaloes final possession didn't cost his team the
game.
Instead, he blamed the poor shooting
night by the Buffaloes.
"There are maybe 75 possessions in
this game, and we felt that it shouldn't of got to that play.
There are just many other plays that we should of made that
we didn't."
A 7-of-15 effort from the foul line
didn't help matters.
One player struggling at the line
is the team's leading scorer, Jonathon Harris. Harris went
3-of-8 from the charity stripe in Saturday's contest.
"Jon has a block right now, he doesn't
go to the line with any confidence," Wallingford said. "He
shot multiple ways. Now he goes to the line experimenting.
We've discouraged him from that, but that's where it is.
"So we're going to buckle down, and
he's a good enough player that he can step up to the line
and make 70 percent of his free-throws for us. But other guys
stepped up there and missed as well. It was not just one person."
Harris did lead Milligan in scoring
with 19 points, while Craig Emmert added 13 to the Buffs cause.
Dillon McElroy and Locy each poured
in 16 to top Bryan.
