Men’s B-ball struggles in conference play
Matt Schaeffer
Entering the season with high hopes, the Mesa men’s basketball team has fallen on hard times in conference play. The Thunderbirds started conference play midway through November with wins over Yavapai and Glendale.
A trip to Yuma to face off with Arizona Western on Dec. 1 launched a bad two months for Mesa.
In that game Mesa shot just 3 of 22 from the field in the first half, leaving them trailing 32-16 at halftime. A deficit that they could not recover from.
The Tbirds dropped their next three games following that loss by an average of 12 points per game.
With 20 days off before the Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout, Mesa looked to use the time off to correct their problems on the court.
In the opening round things went well. John Balwigaire and Alex Rudd combined for 40 points as they knocked off the Lethbridge Kodiaks.
Mesa’s resurgence was short lived, however, as they went on to lose the semi final and third place games to Westwind Prep and Howard College respectively.
The end of the tournament was not the end of the Thunderbird’s struggles as Sam Ballard’s team who lost a hard fought battle against Central Arizona by three points at home.
Mesa continued their shooting woes against non conference opponent South Plains College as they shot just 17.4 percent from the field in the first half of a 68-55 loss.
The team has yet to improve as they dropped the following three games and now stand at 5-12 on the season and an abysmal 2-8 in conference play following their 63-58 loss to Phoenix College in the MLK classic.
Poor shooting wasn’t the issue it had been in other losses but getting to the line was.
Phoenix shot 21 more free throws than Mesa which proved to be the deciding factor.
Ballard’s squad boasts the third best defense in the ACCAC conference but a league worst offense is not going to lead to many wins.
Mesa’s leading scorer John Balwigaire ranks just 14th in the conference with 14.7 point-per-games.
Without improved offensive performance it doesn’t look as if the Thunderbirds will be winning many more games.
