By River Mitchell
@rivermitchell27
The Springfield College men’s basketball team hosted the WPI Engineers in Blake Arena on Saturday afternoon. WPI dominated in almost every aspect of the game en route to an 83-58 victory. The Engineers produced a higher field goal percentage, higher free throw percentage, more bench points, and points in paint.
“For us, it was a combination of a lot of things,” said head coach Mike McClendon. “Turnovers, injuries, shot selection, I mean we can go on and on.”
John Adams was the catalyst for the Engineers, as he dropped 27 on the Pride, collecting 12 boards to collect his fourth straight double-double. Also, John Lowther chipped in 12 points and eight boards of his own. Donovan Sevilla provided 13 points and five assists, with Aidan Callahan having a team-high six assists with seven points on his own. Overall, WPI shot at a respectable 44.8% from the field and a 78.3 free throw percentage.
For Springfield, it was a very sloppy game. Despite its 7-0 scoring run to end the first half, the Pride couldn’t seem to find the bucket. They shot a meager 31.6% from the field, while also shooting 24% from three, accompanied by 19 turnovers. They also shot just south of 70% at line.
“For us, that first half was momentum, adrenaline, and then half time comes, and they kind of were like ‘Ok, let’s go with what works’”, McClendon said. “They went inside, and we couldn’t match with our big man (Curtiss Blische) getting hurt. We really couldn’t match them inside.”
Curtiss Blische was removed from the game after what appeared to be an ankle injury. This was a huge loss for the Pride, as Blische was coming off a great game against Emerson where he dropped 17 points along with 11 rebounds.
With the score being only 9-9 with 13:23 left, WPI went on a 10-point run in a span of five minutes. Their lead blossomed to 36-23 with only 1:17 left in the half. However, the Pride managed to string together seven consecutive points to end the half, capped off by a beautiful, buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Nick Bray to head into the half only down by six at 36-30. However, WPI went on a 17-2 run from 15:53 to 8:12 which put the game out of reach for the Pride.
Despite the unfavorable final score, McClendon is proud of his players for giving it there all out on the court.
“We went against the 13th best team in the country,” McClendon said. “They’re undefeated in our NEWMAC conference for a reason. Again, I’m proud of our guys – they played as hard as they could. We didn’t come out with a victory, but we got some good film to go from this.”
The Pride hope to rebound in their next game against the MIT Engineers on Wednesday.
Photo: Springfield College Athletics