Courtney Van Haaften | Sports Co-Editor
On Saturday, Nov. 30, the Buena Vista University (BVU) men’s basketball team competed against #20 University of Wisconsin-Platteville and came out with a 98-80 victory in the contest. Sophomore Nick Clark and junior Cole Darrow led the Beavers with 20 and 18 points, respectively.
The Beavers put in a lot of work in the week of practice prior to the game in order to play to the best of their ability against such a tough team. Their main focus was defense and not giving up as many points as they had in their previous games.
“We have been working on defending better and making better decisions with the basketball. In this game, we passed the ball beautifully, and we have done that over the last week in practice,” Head Coach Brian Van Haaften said.
“We really were only doing defensive drills all week long. We have been giving up high point totals so far, so to hold this top-20 team down was rewarding. It was a very fun game to play after a focused week of practice,” Clark said.
The halftime score was 38-31 with BVU in the lead.
A strong start to the second half eventually lifted their lead to 22 points at one point and stayed pretty stable for the remainder of the game.
Clark, who has been named the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) Male Athlete of the Week for his performance, finished the game with 20 points, while being 4-4 from the 3-point line and 6-8 at the free throw line, along with five assists.
“We feel like we are a very good team, and we just wanted to play with a little bit more desperation and if we did that, we felt like we could beat Platteville,” Van Haaften said.
Overall, the depth of the team proved to be successful. Many different players contributed in many different ways to defeat the Pioneers. The team’s quickness, ability to transition, and great shooting was too much for UW-Platteville. The Beavers shot a stellar 85.7% from the three-point arc and finished with an overall field goal percentage of 58.2%.
“It felt great to win at home in front of our crowd. We played two great halves and shot really well,” Clark said.
The Beavers now sit at a record of 3-3. Their next game is Saturday, Dec. 7 at home against Northwestern-St.Paul with tip-off at 4:00 p.m.
Photo by Tyson Domingo
