In the chase

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN MATT INSLEY & DON RATZLAFF
Once again the Tabor men’s basketball team struggled on the road, but pulled out a 71-62 win over Sterling College Monday night.


Head Coach Don Brubacher was disappointed with the Jays’ effort.


“I’m not pleased with the way our team played tonight,” he said.


At times it looked as though Tabor was going to pull away from the overmatched Warriors, but Bluejay mistakes helped Sterling keep it close.


Brubacher noticed a disturbing pattern developing during the game.


“Every single time we were on the verge of generating a lead that would put the game out of reach, we simply made big offensive and defensive mistakes,” he said.


The first half was close, with the lead changing hands seven times. The pace was slow, and at one point near the end of the second half, neither team scored for a three-minute period.


Scott Brubacher’s 3-pointer with 30 seconds left gave Tabor a 33-29 halftime lead.


The Bluejays were red-hot to start the second half, outscoring the Warriors 21-11 in the first four minutes.


Micah Ratzlaff tallied 11 points in the first five minutes of the half, including three 3-pointers. He finished with a game-high 22 points, a game-high seven rebounds, and four assists.


Despite the run, Tabor could not put the pesky Sterling squad away. Brubacher thought his team’s inconsistency was the key reason.


“We could not sustain quality play on both ends of the court beyond a minute and a half or two minutes at any point in the entire game.”


Tabor finished off the Warriors down the stretch, even though they let the lead dwindle to under 10 in the waning minutes. The Jays shot 52 percent from the floor .


Brubacher was pleased with the way his team took care of the basketball. They committed only eight turnovers.Tabor 76, Bethany 64


By taking care of business at the free-throw line, Tabor took care of Bethany, 76-64, in a key matchup between KCAC title contenders Saturday night.


Playing before a full house at Tabor Gymnasium, the Jays hit 18 of 21 free throws over the last 8:16 of the game to keep a scrappy Bethany team at bay.


Micah Ratzlaff’s 3-pointer with 2:04 to go was the only field goal Tabor managed-or needed, for that matter-over that eight-minute stretch. The rest of the Jays’ offensive production came at the stripe.


“We were playing with enough of a cushion that there wasn’t a huge amount of pressure on any individual free-throw shooter,” coach Don Brubacher said. “But if you get a bad run started at the line it isn’t unusual for it to build on itself. So the fact that we shot reasonably well from the line that entire stretch helped.”


The Bluejays took the lead for a good with 6:23 to play in the first half when Ratzlaff scored a bucket off a feed from Eric Driggers, was fouled, and then sank the free throw to make the score 23-21.


A 5-0 burst in the last 47 seconds of the half-two free throws by Micah Ratzlaff, two by his brother, Tyson, and then a field goal by Micah with a second left-pushed the lead to 10 at intermission, 38-28.


Bethany never got closer than eight points in the second half and the Jays never led by more than 15.


Micah Ratzlaff finished with a game-high 26 points, including a crowd-pleasing, one-handed slam on an ally-oop pass from Kevin Koehn early in the second half. Ratzlaff was 3-of-4 from behind the arc and 9-of-11 from the charity stripe. He also led Tabor with seven rebounds.


Ernest Nortey was the only other Bluejay to break double digits, scoring 10 points.


As a team, Tabor shot nearly 54 percent from the field. The Jays’ 25 turnovers were about the only downside to an otherwise solid performance.


“I think we could have had the game in our control the last 10 or 12 minutes of the game if we simply could have taken care of the basketball,” Brubacher said.




Friends 54, Tabor 49 (OT)


Poor shooting and untimely defensive lapses proved to be a lethal combination for Tabor in a 54-49 overtime loss to Friends Thursday night in Wichita.


The Bluejays had a miserable shooting night, hitting only 34 percent of their shots. They were a frigid 2-of-19 from behind the arc.


“It’s not that we just shot the ball badly on 3-point attempts,” coach Don Brubacher said. “We couldn’t convert layups-we missed six to 10 layups just in the second half. A couple of them were uncontested layups.”


But not much went uncontested on this night. Both teams played defense so aggressively, particularly in the first half, that at times the action resembled a street brawl more than a basketball game.


“The first half was the most ugly, physically brutal game I’ve ever seen in KCAC basketball,” Brubacher said. “I’ve never seen a game that was so flagrantly, violently physical.”


The rough play made it difficult for either team to establish any offensive flow. Both shot an identical 7-of-20 from the field in the first half on the way to a 20-18 Friends advantage at intermission.


In the second half, the Bluejays managed to carve out a six-point lead on Jimmy Janzen’s free throw with 5:08 to play. Considering how the game had gone to that point, the 37-31 margin seemed huge.


But Friends took advantage of some Bluejay mistakes to tie the score at 42 following a steal and layup by Troy Dusenbery with 1:21 to play.


Friends had two chances to win in regulation. James O’Brien missed a field-goal attempt with 15 seconds left, but Friends rebounded. Marcus Coleman then missed an open-look 3-pointer with two seconds left.


The overtime belonged to Friends, though. Dusenbery hit two 3-pointers and, after a Kevin Koehn bucket, Jeff McMillin burned the Jays’ defense on a long pass off the inbounds play to put the Falcons ahead 50-44. Coleman added two free throws to stretch the lead to eight points with 2:31 to play.


Tabor’s Dustin Frost hit a 3-pointer and 2-pointer to cut the margin to 52-49 with 1:31 left. But the Jays’ recovery unraveled when Koehn dribbled the ball off his foot on a drive to the basket with 14 seconds left.


Two more free throws by Coleman following a desperation foul completed the scoring.


Koehn led the Bluejays with 15 points, Micah Ratzlaff added 14 and and Lance Redetzke 10.


Coleman, Dusenbery and McMillin finished with 15, 13 and 10 points, respectively, for Friends.

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