Game Recap: Hill to big to climb

Clever huh?  Anthony Hill proved to be too much for the Crusaders to handle on this night.  The Panther big man had a nice night scoring 24 points and grabbing 11 boards.  Hill was 7-11 from the field and an impressive 10-13 from the charity stripe. Perhaps the biggest impact he had was getting the Crusaders in foul trouble early and often.  The first half saw 12 fouls called on VU and 5 called on Milwaukee. 



Valpo managed to hang around and keep the game interesting pulling the game to within 4 at the 2:00 mark.  Unfortunately, playing all these games over the past two weeks seem to have taken their toll as the Crusader's couldn't find their shooting touch.  Anytime Valpo tried to make a run it was answered by a Panther three pointer or inside hoop.  This brings me to my biggest gripe of the game: the announcers for ESPN were bad.  Seemed every shot Milwaukee hit between the 12 minute mark and the 10 minute mark were daggers.  The lead wasn't even in double digits, but these made shots were daggers.  Give me a break. 

Back to the game, Brandon Wood again led the team with 24 points on 9-19 shooting including 3-10 from behind the arc.  Valpo shot only 20% from behind the three point line, a far cry from their performance against Detroit.  Ryan Broekhoff didn't have his normal touch from the field shooting only 1-11 and 0-5 from distance (he did grab a team high 8 rebounds).  Cory Johnson was the only other Crusader in double figures with 14 points.  He was hampered by foul trouble limiting his playing time to only 19 minutes.  Other Crusaders limited with foul trouble where Howard Little and Kevin Van Wijk.  Coach Drew was apparently as frustrated with the calls as this fan was as he took a rare technical foul to make a point with the refs.

The loss marks the end of the season for the team.  They will now have to sit and wait to see where they will go for what will most likely be an invitation to the NIT tournament. 

Having won the game, Milwaukee will get the opportunity to host the Horizon League tournament championship on their home court against the Butler Bulldogs (who they beat twice in the regular season) who took care of business, for the third time this year, against Cleveland State.  Butler put four starters in double figures (Smith 12, Howard 14, Mack 15, and Vanzant 18).  The Bulldogs were able to withstand another solid performance from HL Player of the Year Norris Cole who finished with 24 points and 6 rebounds.  Cleveland State will wait and see if they can somehow pull of an at large bid, but I suspect that they too will be off to the NIT.  Read more about the semi-final games at the Horizon League website: http://www.horizonleague.org/blog/butler-xxxx-to-meet-for-horizon-league-mens-basketball-championship.html