Saturday, March 2
Rochester, Mich.
6 p.m.
Purdue Fort Wayne
at
Oakland
Photo by: Lucas Carter
Men's Basketball Caps Regular Season at Oakland
3/1/2013 9:53:00 AM | Men's Basketball
PREGAME NOTES
FORT WAYNE, Ind. - The IPFW Mastodons take to the road for the 2012-13 finale, as the squad faces off against the Oakland Grizzlies, a team they played just 10 days earlier in Fort Wayne, and also a possible first-round opponent for the 2013 Summit League Tournament in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Opponent: Oakland Golden Grizzlies (16-14, 10-5 Summit League)
When: Saturday, March 2, 2013 | 6 p.m. EST
Where: Rochester, Mich. | Athletics Center O'rena (3,000)
Radio: WKJG ESPN Radio 1380 AM | Kent Hormann, play-by-play; Jeff Parrish, analyst
Live Stats: Oakland Gametracker
Video Streaming: OUGrizzlies.com Video (subscription required)
SCOUTING THE GOLDEN GRIZZLIES
Oakland comes into the second meeting between the two teams in the last week and a half after an 82-79 overtime win over Morehead State in the Ramada Worldwide Bracketbuster game.
In the Morehead State win, Travis Bader scored 27 points, hitting 5-of-8 from long range and all 10 of his charity stripe attempts, while Ryan Bass scored 18, Drew Valentine 15, and Duke Mondy 10. Corey Petros pulled down a team-high nine rebounds, while Mondy dished out a game-high five assists and nabbed four steals.
Bader continues to lead the team in scoring, averaging 22.3 points per game, while Petros and Mondy average 12.6 and 12.2, each. Drew Valentine is just over the double-figure plateau at 10.1, with Ryan Bass chasing the mark at 9.2 points per game. Dante Williams is the next leading scorer for the Golden Grizzlies, averaging 3.1 per game. Petros pulls down 8.2 rebounds per game, with Valentine pulling down 6.6, as Oakland is out-rebounded by an average of a third of a rebound per game. Mondy has a team-best 156 assists and 95 steals, while he and Petros lead the team with 10 blocked shots each.
LAST TIME AGAINST THE GOLDEN GRIZZLIES
The IPFW Mastodons saw five players reach double-figure scoring, led by Frank Gaines' 17, as IPFW snapped a 10-game series losing skid to the Oakland Grizzlies with a 77-71 win at the Memorial Coliseum on Wednesday evening.
Gaines went for 17, while Luis Jacobo scored 15, Joe Reed 14, Joe Edwards 11, and Mario Hines 10. In all, 18 of IPFW's 27 baskets were assisted, as Pierre Bland and Jacobo each dished out four. Jacobo grabbed an IPFW-career-high nine rebounds, as IPFW out-rebounded Oakland 35-to-33.
IPFW jumped ahead quickly, leading by five at 12-7 after a Gaines three-point basket; however, the Grizzlies ran off a 16-5 run to lead by six, at 23-17 with 10:59 to play.
The Mastodons, facing their biggest deficit of the game, immediately ran off eight straight points, capped by a pair of Gaines free throws, and a 19-2 overall run that gave IPFW an 11-point lead at 36-25 with 5:10 to play after a Hines lay-in.
That Hines basket would be the last IPFW would score in the period, with Oakland running off eight straight to close the gap to 11 at the break.
Neither team could get an offensive foothold early in the second half, with the margin fluctuating between one and six points in favor of IPFW for the first 14 minutes of the second half, before Oakland tied the game at 62 on a Bader lay-in, and a possession later took its first lead of the second half on another Bader lay-up at 64-62 with 5:30 left in the game.
The Grizzlies led by one at 65-64 with 3:56 left in the game; however, the Mastodon defense dug their ground, and held Oakland scoreless for a 3:25 span, at which the 'Dons scored a dozen, to push ahead by 11 at 76-65 after a pair of Gaines free throws. Oakland out-scored IPFW 6-1 over the final 31 seconds, but the damage had been done in the IPFW win.
IPFW went 27-of-62 from the field (43.5%), 8-of-23 (34.8%) on 3's, and 15-of-21 (71.4%) from the charity stripe, while Oakland hit 47.2 percent (25-of-53) of its shots from the field, 5-of-20 (25.0%) from long range, and 16-of-29 (55.2%) on free throws.
Oakland was led by Bader who scored 23 points, while Corey Petros scored 15 and Drew Valentine 12 with a team-high 12 rebounds.
ALL-TIME SERIES
Oakland holds a dominating 16-4 lead in the all-time series between the two teams; however, the 'Dons snapped a 10-game losing skid to the Golden Grizzlies on February 20 in Fort Wayne. The Mastodons won the first two meetings between the schools as members of The Summit League in 2007-08; however, Oakland rattled off 10 straight, including two in the Summit League Tournament in Sioux Falls, South Dakota before IPFW's win a week and a half earlier.
HAVEN'T I SEEN YOU BEFORE?
If the Summit League standings remain as-is for the final league weekend of the year, IPFW and Oakland will do battle three times within a four-game span, the third of those meetings coming in the Summit League Tournament. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, this same feat happened last season when Eastern Washington swept Idaho State in a three-game span ending in the conference tournament. Before that, the last time a NCAA Division I team played another three times in a four-game span was in 2006-07.
SCORING GAINES
On Saturday, February 23, the IPFW Mastodons crowned a new career scoring leader, as Frank Gaines pushed past Sean Gibson into the top spot all-time.
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