Mastodons Win Seesaw Battle Over Coyotes

Thursday, February 13

Fort Wayne, Ind.

7 p.m.

Purdue Fort Wayne

19-8, 7-3SL

South Dakota

3-69-15; SL

South Dakota

IPFW

Photo by: Lucas Carter

2/13/2014 10:35:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

BOX SCORE | BOX SCORE (.pdf) | BOX SCORE (.html)

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - The IPFW men's basketball team led by 18 in the first half and trailed by four in the second, but found enough late to pull away from the South Dakota Coyotes, winning the seesaw battle 75-69.

The win gives IPFW 19 wins, a new program high for wins in the NCAA Division I era, and the fifth-highest win total overall. The last time a Mastodon men's basketball program has won at least 19 games was 21 years ago when the 1992-93 squad won 23 games en route to an NCAA Division II National Tournament berth.

Mo Evans scored a game-high 17 points for IPFW, while Steve Forbes picked up his second double-double of the season with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Luis Jacobo scored 15 including a thunderous fastbreak dunk (see the highlight here) that brought the Gates Sports Center crowd to its feet, while Joe Edwards added 14 points, including a career-high 10 from the charity stripe.

IPFW out-rebounded the Coyotes 41-to-32, including eight from Joe Reed and six from Jacobo. Pierre Bland dished out a team-best three assists, while Jacobo and Edwards led the team with two steals each.

The Mastodons never trailed in the first half, and used a 10-0 run over a three and a half minute span that turned an eight-point IPFW advantage into an 18-point lead. The lead remained 18 with 5:03 to play in the half before the Coyotes started chipping away, out-scoring IPFW 8-2 over the final five minutes to cut the gap to a dozen heading into the locker room at halftime.

South Dakota cut even more into the deficit, and trailed by nine after a Forbes lay-in with 15:51 to play in the game. For the next three minutes it was all Coyotes, as they ran off 13 consecutive points. The 13-point run gave the visitors their first lead of the game at 40-38 with 12:54 to play.

The Coyotes pushed ahead by as many as four, before IPFW scored the next four points - all from the free throw line, tying the game at 45. The teams battled back and forth with three more tie scores.

A Forbes tip-in tied the game for the final time at 48, before Evans hit three-pointers in back-to-back possessions to put IPFW ahead by six, setting the stage for Jacobo's big dunk and free throw that put the Mastodons ahead for good.

The feisty USD squad would not back down, closing to within as few as three; however, the Mastodons would not succumb to the Coyote pressure, and iced the game by hitting 9-of-14 free throws down the stretch, and getting an offensive rebound on three of those misses.

IPFW hit 22-of-58 shots from the field, a percentage of 37.9, the second time this season that the Mastodons have hit less than 40 percent of its shots and still won (along with Bowling Green on January 2). The Mastodons went 7-of-22 (31.8%) from long range, and 24-of-34 from the charity stripe.

South Dakota was led by 15 points from Karim Rowson, while Trevor Gruis scored 14, pulled down eight rebounds, and blocked seven shots.

The Mastodons return to action at the Gates Sports Center for the final time in the 2013-14 season, as the team will honor its three seniors, Pierre Bland, Luis Jacobo, and Michael Kibiloski in a ceremony before the game.

~ Feel the Rumble ~