Mastodon Men Fall in Shootout with Grizzlies

Saturday, January 14

Memorial Coliseum

7:00 p.m.

Purdue Fort Wayne

9-8, 3-5Summit

Oakland

10-10, 4-4SL

Oakland

IPFW

Photo by: Lucas Carter

1/14/2012 10:56:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - In a game featuring two of the top 11 scorers in NCAA Division I, the teams combined for 182 points, including 20 off the bench from Mario Hines in an Oakland 96-86 victory over the IPFW Mastodons on Saturday evening.

IPFW remains a game above .500 with the loss at 9-8, while falling to 3-5 in Summit League play, while Oakland evens its record at 10-10 overall and 4-4 in league play.

Coming into the game, Oakland's Reggie Hamilton was third in Division I in scoring average, while IPFW's Frank Gaines was 11th. Hamilton ended with a game-high 30 points, while Gaines had 19.

Hines led five IPFW players in double-figures in the scoring column, making 8-of-9 shots from the field and 4-of-7 charity stripe attempts. Antwaun Boyd scored a career-high 15 points, while Justin Jordan added a dozen, and Michael Kibiloski 11. Three of the Mastodons' double-figure scorers came off the bench, as the IPFW reserves out-scored their Oakland counterparts 49-to-37 in the game.

Hines and Isaiah McCray pulled down five rebounds to lead the team, with IPFW out-rebounding Oakland 34-to-28, while Jordan led the team with four assists.

The teams battled back-and-forth in the first half with 11 lead changes and four tie scores, with the largest lead either team would manage being six, when the Grizzlies took a 39-33 lead with 5:10 to play in the first half.

Trailing by a half-dozen, the Mastodons clawed back, eventually taking a one-point lead after a Jordan lay-up with 2:13 to play. Oakland's Drew Valentine answered back with a lay-up, and the Grizzlies took the momentum into the locker room at halftime as Travis Bader drained a three-pointer as time expired in the first half, giving the visitors a four-point, 48-44 lead through the first 20 minutes of the contest.

Back-to-back three-pointers to start the second half for Oakland pushed the lead to double-digits; however, the Mastodons would not back away, climbing to within six at 73-67 after a Hines lay-in. The 9-2 run that followed took the lead once again to double-digits, as IPFW would only get to within eight the rest of the way in the ten-point loss.

The Mastodons' 53.4 shooting percentage (31-of-58) marks the third time in the last four games that IPFW has made over half of its shoots, including an identical 31-of-58 game on January 3 against Southern Utah.

The squad takes a break until Thursday, January 19 when the squad travels to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to take on the Golden Eagles of Oral Roberts University in a 8 p.m. (EST) tip-off at the Mabee Center.

~ Feel the Rumble ~