Late Game Drought Dooms Dawson
Similar to the storyline of their game at home a couple of weeks ago, the Dawson Community College Buccaneers controlled the entire game against the Northwest College Trappers, but couldn’t finish it off. This time they couldn’t manage to score in the final five minutes and Northwest prevailed 65-55. It was a cold shooting night for the Bucs as they made only 27% of their shots from the field, including an abysmal 22% in the second half. Even with their poor shooting, the Bucs were still up 55-54 with 2:22 remaining in the game before Trappers big man Brian Howell hit his second three-pointer. Dawson called a timeout and executed well on their next possession, but Marcus Stephens couldn’t finish on a drive to the basket. The momentum swung for Northwest on their next trip up the floor when Lagio Grantsaan had a monstrous dunk to put them up by four points 59-55. The Bucs Beau Santsistevan came down and missed a three-pointer and Reme Torbert made them pay by driving and scoring on the other end. The nail in the coffin came on another dunk, this time by Howell. Northwest ended the game on a 13-0 run to claim the ten point victory.
It was an unfortunate ending for Dawson who held the lead for most of the first 37 minutes of the game. Their biggest margin was 8 points in the first half, but most of the way it was a 4-6 point margin. The Bucs only turned it over seven times in the first half and won the battle of the boards. Santistevan netted a couple of three-pointers and a drive in the first half to score 8 points. Brian Howell kept the Trappers in striking range with his 10 points. The home team was ice cold in the opening half shooting 3-16 from long range. It was a low scoring half in which Dawson won 33-27. The second half story line was very similar until Northwest made the big surge at the end of the game. One of the big keys to their comeback victory was controlling the boards with 18 more rebounds than the Bucs.
Dawson Coach Joe Peterson regretted the final outcome, “This was another game that we should have won. Similar to the first time we played them, we didn’t put them away when we had the chance. It is disheartening to be in control of the entire game, but not finish it off. We struggled to score tonight, but if we could have gotten some stops on key possessions, then it would have been a different result. I was disappointed by our rebounding in the second half. We started the game with that desire to go get the ball, but it faded as the game wore on.”
The Buccaneers were led by CJ Nelson and Marcus Stephens who both had 12 points. For the Trappers Howell and Brown finished with 16 points each while Torbert contributed 13 and Grantsaan had 9 to go along with 13 rebounds.
Dawson returns home for games on December 8th and 9th.
