Smith’s 48-point game brings men’s basketball team to a 20-point victory over Midland Warriors
Senior forward Tristan Smith (22) jumps up to take a successful shot at the basket (photo from previous game).
Photo credit: Maddy Peters
By Isaac Dawson
Concordia men’s basketball dominated in the paint this Wednesday, defeating the Midland University Warriors in the Great Plains Athletic Conference quarterfinals with a 20-point gap to end the game at 101-81.
Coach Ben Limback’s team had a strong offense throughout the game. They stayed ahead through a combined effort by their outside shooters and good drives to the basket. However, Midland was only the first step in a competitive conference tournament and an automatic national bid on the line.
“There’s a lot of good teams left,” said Limback. “I think Northwestern’s going to win based on the score I saw and obviously Dordt is the one-seed and we’ll be on the road. Every team’s good, this Midland team’s had a great year. Tristan [Smith] was unbelievable tonight, those are the things that help you beat good teams. We’ve got to be ready for another big one Saturday.”
The Bulldogs biggest asset was far and away senior Tristan Smith under the basket. Smith achieved a school record high of points scored in a game with a whopping 48 points, nearly half of Concordia’s score.
“Just from the beginning we were looking to exploit the mismatches on the inside,” said Smith. “I mean, that’s a good team and they were scared of our shooters, so that opened up a lot on the interior for me. Especially the way our guys shot on Saturday against Mount Marty, I think their scout was to let me go one-on-one and not give up thirty, forty assists. Our shooters still shot the heck out of the ball today, especially in the second half. We’re a tough team to guard, cause inside and outside we’ve got threats.”
The struggle Smith alluded to in the first half showed itself mostly in the form of 0-10 for three pointers, much improved in the second with 5-9. The team as a whole shot for 19-38 in the first half and 24-35 in the second.
The first half was close until about 15 minutes left. Each team did well under the basket, Concordia simply had an advantage in the form of Tristan Smith with 24 points in the first 20 minutes. Shots from beyond the three-point line were repelled seemingly by magic. Despite this the Bulldogs did well inside the line and kept fouls to a minimum.
Each team’s game stepped up in the second half. Concordia’s shooting game jumped up dramatically and everyone continued to do well in the paint. Several Bulldogs pulled off dunks, and by the end of the match Smith’s game had the arena going wild. One last layup at 48 seconds froze the score at 101-81 for Concordia.
Concordia had several shooters who put up a reasonable number of points. They had seven guys excluding Smith who put up more than five points. The forerunners were freshman Elijah Gaeth with nine and junior Zac Kulus with seven.
“I think we just executed our game plan really well,” said Smith on the team’s performance. “Especially to start both halves we executed really well on defense, that was our biggest focus coming in. Especially our switches. One through five, just being aggressive with them I think we did a great job.”
Smith got the most rebounds as well as the most points with 10 total. Senior Brad Bennett dished out five assists to lead the team in that category. Sophomore Jaxon Stueve had four steals on defense, and the Bulldogs held the Warriors back to 5-15 three pointers overall and forced them to try to get in deeper.
“We’ve got a great young group,” said Limback on the state of the team. “The sophomore class is really strong, and we’ve got some juniors. There’s some good depth in this program. Right now, everybody sees the Tristans and Noahs [Schutte], but I think there’s a lot of good young guys as well. We’re going to enjoy this year, but it’s good to see some young guys get some experience too.”
Concordia is now 24-5 overall and next faces off against Northwestern in Friedrich Arena for the GPAC semifinal game on Saturday, March 1 at 3 p.m.
