Western’s men’s basketball team is one road win away from becoming the first team in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference to go undefeated while traveling.
The No. 10 Vikings won their season-high, tenth-straight game, 77-67 against Northwest Nazarene University. Western is 23-3 overall and leads the GNAC 14-1.
The Vikings worked hard to keep a consistent lead throughout the game. At the half, the Vikings were up 35-27 and held, at most, a 17-point lead throughout the second half.
Coach Brad Jackson thought the team played a good game.
“I think we played solidly,” Jackson said. “We shot 56 percent. All in all, it was a pretty good game.”
The Vikings made 20 of 22 free throws, 18 of which came in the second half. Senior forward Rory Blanche went 4 for 4 from the line and has a total of 19 consecutive free throw shots made.
Sophomore guard Richard Woodworth scored nine points and had four assists.
“Our game plan was to try and deny their threes,” Woodworth said. “I think we did pretty well for the most part. I think defensively we played better than we had the last couple of games. We did a really good job of rebounding the ball and that really helped us.”
Junior guard John Allen scored 15 points and had eight assists.
Blanche scored a career-high of 30 points and had seven rebounds.
“When we’re playing our game, no body can beat us,” Blanche said.
Junior forward Paul Jones kept the momentum up with two huge dunks in the second half.
“We were able to feed off that energy,” Blanche said.
Jones scored a total of 10 points and had two steals.
“We just stayed consistent,” Woodworth said. “We built the lead and we knew that we could control that the rest of the game.”
The Vikings face rival Central Washington University in Ellensburg on Saturday, Feb. 18 for their final road game of the season.
Central is sixth in the GNAC with a 6-9 conference record.
“We’re feeling really good going into the next game,” Blanche said. “It’s always fun playing in their house and getting booed the whole game.”
Woodworth said he is ready to annihilate the Wildcats.
“I think we’re going to come out and kill these guys,” Woodworth said.
The game will be streamed on 930kbai.com.
Western advances to the GNAC tournament following regular season play with a first round bye. The Vikings can grab top seed in the tournament with one more win in their final three games.
Coach’s assist record surpassed
As a Washington State University Cougar, Western’s men’s basketball head coach Brad Jackson was ranked seventh in career assists with 145. Jackson led the PAC-8 in assists (averaging 5.7 per game) as a senior in 1973-74.
Current Cougar junior guard Reggie Moore surpassed Jackson’s record by two assists in the Thursday, Feb. 16 game against Arizona State University. Moore also averages 5.7 assists per game.
Jackson had a hard time remembering that he was among the top 10 for career assists but he is glad to still be in it.
“There’s certainly been a lot of great players to come through there so I’m happy to be one of those,” Jackson said.
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