Men’s basketball suffers tough loss to Cochise
Jonathon Smith
The Mesa men’s basketball team hosted Cochise on Jan. 9, shortly after coming off a win against South Mountain in the opening game of conference play.
Mesa began the game cold from the field and was sloppy with the ball, which allowed Cochise to hang around despite a tenacious effort on defense from the Thunderbirds.
Mesa’s defense contested nearly every Cochise shot, but ultimately did not have the answer for Cochise’s point guard, Marcus Williams. Williams scored 37 of Cochise’s 63 points on 50 percent shooting. He consistently found his way to the basket, and was able to get to the line seemingly at will. Despite his effort, Mesa led much of the game.
In the first half, #21, Stephen Roger’s sharp shooting from the top of the key and huge pressense on the boards sparked a run and gave Mesa an early nine point lead. Foul trouble plagued Rogers for the entire second half though, and kept him on the bench for all but a minute in the half. Rogers picked up his fourth foul just a minute into the second half, and was forced to sit the next 10 minutes on the bench. When he finally came back in, he picked up a cheap foul on the first possession and fouled out.
After the game, #3 David Henderson said, ” Rodgers is our key player and scorer. Anytime you lose a player like that it’s tough to overcome it. We played well and responded to the challenge though. I’m happy with our effort despite not being prepared to play without Rogers.”
Henderson was critical for the Thunderbird’s down the stretch when Cochise looked poised to run away with the game. With under a minute left and down by six, he drove to the basket for a quick lay-up and drew the foul. After he hit the free throw, Mesa stole the ball and Henderson hit a quick bucket to close the gap to just one point with 16 seconds left.
Mesa got the ball back and nearly tied the game, but a Cochise block and a missed jumper ended any hope of extending the game to overtime.
#20, Eric Hunt, played one of his best games of the season, scoring 20 points and grabbing six rebounds. His 8 for 11 shooting at the line was huge for the Thunderbirds and kept them in the game during the second half.
In the end though, it’s tough for any team to win a game with 23 turnovers. Mesa was able to force 16 tunovers with solid defense that was able to contain everybody but Marcus Williams. The minus seven turnover margin was Mesa’s downfall.
Henderson said, “We need to cut down our turnovers. We play an even tougher team in Arizona Western on Wednesday, and we need to be more careful with the ball if we want to have any chance. Also we need to stay out of foul trouble. Both of those things killed us this game, and will continue to hurt us if we don’t figure out a way to fix them.”
Mesa looks to rebound during a stretch of conference home games, before it takes to the road in February for six of their final eight games.
