The No. 13 Ferris State men’s basketball split the weekend interconference series on the road defeating Wayne State on Thursday, Jan. 25 and then suffered a loss to Saginaw Valley State on Saturday, Jan. 27.
Sitting as the No. 2 seed in the GLIAC regular season standings, the Bulldogs (16-4, 6-3 in conference) are three games back from the No. 1 seed and have a chance to win the GLIAC regular season championship and be the first seed in the GLIAC tournament.
In the first game of the road series, the Bulldogs took on Wayne State, which they won with a final score of 79-75. The team was able to hold the Warriors off to avoid the upset and come up with the win.
Despite the victory, head coach Andy Bronkema was not pleased with the Bulldogs’ defensive performance.
“[We] just didn’t take care of the basketball,” Bronkema said. “[We] didn’t play defense down the stretch and [I’m] pretty disappointed in our defensive effort, just letting them get to the rim time and time again.”
In the first half, the Bulldogs led by 10 with a score of 39-29, holding the Warriors to 29 points, 33.3% from the field and 9.1% from the three-point line. In the second half, the Wayne State offense had better shooting rate of 44.1% from the field and 23.1% from the three-point line with 46 points scored. Clutch free throws made by the Bulldogs helped them hold off to win the game.
The Bulldogs had four players score in double digits. Senior guard Ben Davidson and senior forward Dolapo Olayinka with 20 points, senior forward Desean Munson had 18 points and senior guard Jack Ammerman finished with 10 points.
Munson explains how tough these conference games are despite what the team’s record may be.
“Each and every night is going to be a battle it’s going to be a fight,” Munson said. “We obviously played harder to get the win, but you got to be better than the team that day of the competition in order to beat them no matter if you’re first in the league or if you’re last in the league.”
Following the win over Wayne State, the Bulldogs would go on to face Saginaw Valley, which the Bulldogs would fall short of a comeback coming away with a loss of 99-89.
The Bulldogs’ 10 turnovers in the first half played a part in the huge deficit at the end of the first half down by 22 points, with a score of 57-35. The team fought back but a big second half was not enough for the Bulldogs to pull off the win.
Ferris was led by Davidson with 27 points and junior guard Ethan Erickson with 24 points both scored 18 points each in the second half to help the Bulldogs back into the game but it was not enough.
The Bulldogs will return home for an important series of interconference games. First, they will take on Northern Michigan, which is undefeated in the GLIAC play and holds the No. 1 seed in the GLIAC regular season standings, on Feb. 1. Following this, Ferris will go up against the Michigan Tech Huskies on Feb. 3.