ROLLA, Mo. – After posting a 32-point win in its season opener Saturday, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team will embark on a challenging two-game road trip – which begins Tuesday with a matchup against the defending NCAA Division II champions.
The Miners will face Central Missouri in a 7 p.m. game in Warrensburg, Mo., the first home contest for the Mules since winning the national title game over West Liberty in March. The Mules won a pair of games during the opening weekend of the season, including one over seventh-ranked Minnesota State.
Following Tuesday's game at UCM, the Miners will head to Kansas City Wednesday for an exhibition contest against UMKC. The Miners and Kangaroos will play at 7:05 p.m. on the UMKC campus at the Swinney Recreation Center.
Missouri S&T broke open a close game with a 24-0 run midway through the contest in its 102-70 win over Missouri Baptist Saturday night at Billy Key Court. The Miners led by one with just under a minute to go in the opening half, but scored the final six points before halftime and rattled off 18 straight points in a little over three minutes after the intermission to build a 25-point advantage and never looked back.
After beginning the game with a sluggish shooting performance, the Miners heated up in the second half by connecting on 52.5 percent of their shots after the break and finished the game at 45 percent. S&T also outrebounded the Spartans by 14 boards and forced 31 turnovers in the game that led to 42 points.
Michael Nesbitt (Evansville, Ind./LaLumiere School) led a four-player contingent in double figures for Missouri S&T with 16 points, while
B.J. McLaughlin (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central) scored 14 in his Miner debut with four assists. Nesbitt and McLaughlin combined to go 12-of-16 from the floor in the contest. The Miners also got 13 points from
Desmond Buerge (Carthage, Mo./Carthage) and 12 from
Zach Ellis (St. Louis, Mo./Whitfield School).
Nesbitt also lead the Miners with nine rebounds, while
Danylo Zuikov (Kiev, Ukraine/LaLumiere School) had six boards and a career-high five assists.
Central Missouri upended seventh-ranked Minnesota State 67-66 to open the season in the Sanford Basketball Classic in Sioux Falls, S.D., before completing the weekend sweep with a 67-47 win over Sioux Falls on Saturday.
The Mules got 14 points from Dillon Deck and a double-double from T.J. White – two players who played key roles in UCM's title run last year -- in the victory over Minnesota State, while Kyle Wolf, the Mules' leading scorer for the year, had 14 points in the win over Sioux Falls Saturday.
Wolf is leading a balanced UCM scoring attack with an average of 11.5 points a game, while Brennen Hughes is scoring ten a game. Deck and White are averaging 9.5 points a game, with Deck shooting 64.3 percent from the field for a team shooting 50 percent overall and White hauling in a team-high eight rebounds a contest.
Central is holding its opponents to 36.1 percent shooting from the floor over the first two games of the season.
UMKC, the Miners' opponent on Wednesday, upended Missouri 69-61 to open its season Friday; the Kangaroos were scheduled to play Monday at Kansas State. UMKC got 26 points from Martez Harrison, including 15 at the free throw line where the Kangaroos outscored the Tigers 23-8.
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