NORFOLK, NE – A fourth game in eight days that culminates in a late-winter five-hour bus ride to Norfolk, Nebraska to play in yet another sparsely attended game…
Not exactly a recipe for a team's best performance.
Yet, No. 8-ranked Indian Hills found a way to chalk up another ICCAC road victory with Saturday's 108-86 defeat of Northwest at the Cox Activities Center.
"It's been a grind," said IHCC Head Coach Hank Plona. "Game after game, week after week, in empty gym after empty gym, it gets more and more difficult to bring that speed and that pace. Especially as physically and mentally we're getting a little tired. That's the issue we're trying to overcome."
And overcome they did, as yet another slow start in what has been a troubling trend over the past week saw the Warriors trailing 18-9 six minutes into the contest after the nation's sixth-leading scorer in Michael Anderson tossed in a bucket to give the host Hawks what would be their largest lead.
IHCC responded with an 11-0 run to snatch the lead at 20-18, the game's lone lead change, and after the Hawks finally stopped the bleeding with two points of their own to get it even at 20, the Warriors ran off to another 9-0 run to make it 29-20 after a Taj Anderson 3-pointer. The 20-2 Warrior run ended in a timeout from veteran Northeast coach Dan Anderson, but there would be little that the Hawks could do the rest of the way to slow the high-powered Warrior attack the remainder of the contest.
Indian Hills would put an exclamation point on the first half with an 8-0 run to give the Warriors a 15-point lead at intermission at 53-38.
"We're going to be pretty good if we play with that kind of speed and put points on the board," Plona added. "Some people may not like to hear this, but it's not really about shooting too many threes, or too many twos. We just have to do whatever we do with confidence. That's what we've been talking about the past couple of days is doing what we do, as good as we can do it. And when we do that, we're going to score some points."
The points came fast and furious after halftime as the Warriors followed up their 53 point half with 55 more which brought the frustration to a boiling point for the hosts. Michael Anderson, who led the Hawks with 23 points, was assessed a technical foul three minutes into the second stanza, and his coach was handed a T of his own at the 14:50 mark with the Warriors up 72-47.
Every IHCC player on the roster contributed to the point total, led by Tyem Freeman's 27 points and 24 from Taj Anderson, who nailed six of the Warriors 13 triples on the night.
"They are unique special players," Plona said of his two scoring leaders. "We don't want them to just take a quote-unquote 'nice good shot,' we want those guys to play with some swag. It's why we recruit them, because we think they are tremendous offensive players."
"I thought Tye did a tremendous job early in the game. He came out with a renewed energy and confidence, and I thought Taj really picked it up at the end of the first half. A lot of our guys played well on offense, but those two certainly stood out."
Curtis Jones quarterbacked the Warrior offense again with 17 points, seven assists, four rebounds and two steals, while all Chris Payton did was stack up yet another double-double with 13 points and 12 rebounds. Levar Williams drained three treys to give him nine points while Tyrese Nickelson and Theo Bourgeois each added eight.
"Hopefully we can continue to build upon this," Plona said. "We don't measure ourselves on point totals. We measure ourselves on the shots that we get based on the speed that we play, and I thought we did a better job of that today."
The Warrior headman also took a moment in the postgame to reflect on what's been the most unusual of year as he looked forward to what is always a big game on the IHCC schedule.
"In a normal year, the priority isn't just playing the games because you take that for granted," Plona said. "But, I don't think that this year we take anything for granted. So we came over this morning to avoid hotels and restaurants and things of that nature. I'll say I would have been happy winning by one. I don't think we were quite as good as the scores showed maybe two or three weeks ago, and I don't think that maybe we're struggling as much as maybe it looked on Tuesday, (a 75-64 home loss to DMACC). I think everything evens out."
"To come over here and get a win after a long trip is good for us. Now having three days off before playing Southeastern on Wednesday will be refreshing, and probably needed," Plona admitted. "Obviously we know what's ahead of us and hopefully we'll be ready to play."
Plona noted that the Warriors' long-time rival won't be the same team they faced in game three of the season in a 77-67 win in overtime at West Burlington.
"They've been playing well, they've been figuring some things out," Plona said about the Blackhawks. "They've been playing some different guys than they were in game three. Bottom line is that we've won some games since then, but after 40 minutes down there it was a tie game. It's not like we were 30 or 40 points better than them, certainly the score didn't show that. They've kind of gotten on a roll and Wednesday will be a big day, and we could use a big win to kind of get our step back behind us, get our swag back."
Game time Wednesday between the Warriors (10-2) and Blackhawks (9-4) is set for 7 p.m. SCC suffered a 82-72 loss to DMACC Saturday in West Burlington.