By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
The near-capacity crowd at Connor Convocation Center liked the way this was going – well most of them did, except for a large, loud contingent from Owensboro.
With just 9:51 left, Thomas More led league-leading Kentucky Wesleyan, 60-57. And the hope was the scrappy Saints could turn around last Saturday’s six-point double-overtime loss in Owensboro as the Panthers played for a regular-season title-clinching win.
Turns out they could not. Not yet.
“We’re not ready to beat that team, yet,” TMU Coach Justin Ray said. Not this year. Not yet, as a veteran, aggressive, athletic and disciplined KWU team (20-6, 14-6), with a win already over Louisville, rallied for a 23-10 run to the finish line for an 80-70 win. TMU closed to 73-70 before failing to score the final 2:31.
Last week, Ray recalled, a missed layup in regulation cost the Saints. One layup. All the difference in the world. On this day, there were five, one on a botched three-on-one fast break.
“We competed,” Ray said, and surely that was right. But TMU (15-11, 10-8 GMAC) couldn’t step up to the moment, not yet. “We scored 30 points the second half,” Ray said, and that wasn’t enough.
Not against a team with two terrific veterans leading the way. Start with fifth-year guy Borja Fernandez, a 6-foot-7, 230-pound tight-end type from Bilbao, Spain, who looks like he should be playing in the Spanish professional league — or the NFL — as he bulled, bounced and finessed his way with both hands to a game-high 35 points on 16-of-22 shooting.
Could TMU guard him? Nope. “We knew that,” Ray said. But were they going to double him? Nope, again. “We knew the big guy would have a big day against us.”
But if you double him and let their three-point shooters to get good looks like the explosively speedy Kennedy Miles, a Division I transfer who added 25 on 10-of-12 shooting, and Alex Gray, who went five for five from long range between them, well, we’ll let Ray explain his reasoning.
“Everybody who does that to them loses,” he said. So the Saints were between the proverbial rock and a hard place. But guarding Fernandez man-to-man without help? “We’re not ready to do that,” Ray said.
It was pick-your-poison day on defense. And yet, had TMU been able to keep up on offense after staying even at 40-40 the first half, this might have been a different story.
But down the stretch, the Saints could convert just four of their final 14 shots against the physical Panther defenders who never seemed to have less than one hand on them, most of the times two. That was how this game was played.
TMU managed just one of two free throws the final 20 minutes while KWU was converting six of their nine field goal attempts over the last 7:43.
With players from Algiers, Algeria; Sydney, Australia and Belgrade, Serbia; KWU Coach Drew Cooper – Ray’s predecessor at TMU – isn’t messing around with this team this year.
“That’s a really good team – all seniors and juniors – they make things really hard on you,” Ray said.
And they made their shots – 32 of 56 from the field (57.1 percent) – which is what this came down to. And all 10 of their free throw attempts.
TMU grad student Reid Jolly has the strength to compete in a game like this, hitting 11 of 21 shots for 24 points. And freshman Nathan Dudukovich, a 6-3 freshman sharpshooter, hit four threes on his way to 21 points.
As the GMAC season winds down, TMU’s 10-8 league record has the Saints tied for fifth with the goal to finish in the top four with two home games next week to complete the regular season and one of those against a Trevecca Nazarene team tied with TMU.
Ray says his team is still trying to work its way up to winning games like this. But if this TMU team was still in the NAIA’s tough Mid-South, he figures they’d be about the same place they are now.
Those TMU teams that went to the NAIA postseason almost every year – and to the Final Four once – were just more veteran, stronger and with maybe one more inside star.
Mitchell Rylee, a 6-8 sophomore transfer from Miami (Ohio) and a CovCath alum did give the Saints seven rebounds, six points and two assists, in 30:48 but it’s there TMU will have to grow up.
SCORING SUMMARY
KENTUCKY WESLEYAN 40 40—80
THOMAS MORE 40 30—70
KENTUCKY WESLEYAN (20-6, 14-6 GMAC): Gray 3-5 1-1 4-4 11, Jones 3-8 1-2 0-0 7, Fernandez 16-22 0-0 3-3 35, Miles 10-12 4-4 1-1 25, Mitchell 0-5 0-4 0-0 0, McIntire 0-3 0-1 0-0 0, Peterson 0-1 0-0 2-2 2, Rakic 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 32-56 6-12 10-10 80.
THOMAS MORE (15-11, 10-8 GMAC): Jolly 11-21 0-2 2-3 24, Rylee 2-4 0-0 2-3 6, Jones 2-2 0-0 0-0 4, George 3-10 0-0 0-0 6, Dudukovich 8-17 4-12 1-1 21, Vieth 2-4 2-4 0-0 6, Browne 0-0 0-0 0-0 0, Howard 1-2 1-2 0-0 3; TOTALS: 29-60 7-20 5-7 70.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.