Click the thumbnails to see photos and videos, and to hear post-game comments from Coach Matt Johnson and Player of the Game, D'Marco Chelley. Also click the AUDIO button to hear Ryan Sweeney's player spotlight interview.
ESCANABA---The Bay College Norse men's basketball team opened its season Friday night with a 82-78 win over the Minnesota North Hibbing Cardinals at the Bay College Gym. The 14th-ranked Norse were sluggish for most of the night, but found a way to pull it out as ten different players reached the scoring column.
“I don't think we were very good, but we won, and we were gritty,” Norse Coach Matt Johnson said. “We did enough to get one, and I guess, at the end of the day, we're 1-0 and I'll take it. We have a lot to improve on. We fouled too much. Our rotations were slow. Our transition defense wasn't very good. We need to be better, and I expect that we will be. Let me also say, this is the best Hibbing team that we've ever played against.”
That is a fact. The Cardinals, who made the long trip from northern Minnesota without even a bus (the coaches drove the players in cramped vans), hustled all night long.
Hibbing, where Johnson coached for nine years before coming to Escanaba to start the Bay program, played hard and had five men score in double figures. And had it not been for a couple of bad breaks, the Cardinals might have pulled off the upset.
The biggest bad break was on the final play of the first half, when Hibbing had the ball and a three-point lead. They missed at one end, and on the other, Bay's Tre Sanigar let it fly at the buzzer. His shot hit the rim, bounced high into the air, and fell into the hoop.
That tied the game at 36-36 at the half.
In the second half, the Norse took the lead as big man Joe Ofori, hobbled by a painful knee injury, scored eleven points, six of them on back-to-back triples. And another sophomore, Ryan Sweney, knocked down a triple and slammed one home off of a loose ball situation, helping Bay to hold off the Cardinal upset bid down the stretch.
The unsung hero might have been Bay freshman Connor Codutti.
The Menominee High School graduate made the most of his three minutes of playing time by knocking down a triple that broke a 59-59 tie midway through the second half. But there's more.
“As big as that shot was, the two defensive possessions that Connor weld up at the front of the rim and got them to miss two point-blank lay-ups, those two plays that equal four points were as important, if not more-so, than the three that he hit,” Johnson said. “In three trips up the floor, he made, you know, a seven-to-ten point swing. So, Connor great. He gave us great minutes.”
Bay was led in scoring by Ofori's 17 points, while Sweeney added 14 and D'Marco Chelley chipped in twelve points, four rebounds, and three assists off the bench.
Hibbing got a game-high 22 points from Trent Sheldon (along with five assists and three rebounds). Jojo Both came off the bench to score 16 points and he grabbed 12 rebounds for a double-double.
Cayde Eberling had 14 points before fouling out late; Herb Augustin chipped in eleven points, and Eriq Caraballo scored ten points.
Johnson says his Norse team has to play better on Saturday against Rock Valley (Illinois) College, which rolled past Alpena Community College on Friday.
“We need to be tougher, we need to rebound better, and we need to take better care of the ball,” Johnson said. “We turned it over way too much in the first half. We need to just, overall, tighten things up, and hopefully we can do that.”
Saturday's game starts at 4:00 and will be broadcast live on Maverick 106.3 FM.
