Game Notes
Kentucky Wesleyan benefited greatly from its early non-conference and early conference schedule. Twelve of its first 14 wins came at the Sportscenter. It wasn't until the Panthers ran into a buzzsaw in Southern Indiana on Monday night that they finally suffered a home loss.
But even their first two road games, against Quincy and Illinois-Springfield, were hard-fought win against teams that were arguably worse than them.
With Thursday's loss at Lewis, in which No. 3 KWC (14-2, 6-2 Great Lakes Valley Conference) never led after the 18:46 mark in the first half, coach Todd Lee said his team is figuring out how tough it is to win on the road in the GLVC.
The Panthers will have a chance to earn one of those road victories and snap a two-game losing streak when they play Wisconsin-Parkside (11-5, 6-2 GLVC) at 3 p.m. Saturday in Somers, Wisc.
"I don't care who you are, if you lose a couple games on the road you're going to wonder about things," Lee said. "You're not going to be as confident, that's just the way it goes. What I try to tell them and make sure they know, because we have so many new guys and a lot of our new guys are our main guys…they're just learning what it takes to win on the road in this league. They don't know. We won a couple games, but we're getting into our division against really good teams every night."
At least history in on KWC's side. The Panthers are 29-3 all-time against the Rangers.
None of that matters to Lee, though, because he knows how good Parkside is. The Rangers are coming off a 77-68 win over USI and feature the GLVC's top scorer, 6-foot-6 senior guard Jeremy Saffold, who averages 20.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per pame and
"He's been an all-conference player now for a number of years," Lee said. "He's a really good, athletic wing that's skilled. They do a lot of things to get him the ball. He can post up, he can drive, he can shoot the 3. He's a hand full. He's the best wing in the league."
The Rangers are also an experienced team. They start two seniors and a junior.
"They've got some seniors. They're a veteran team," Lee said. "It's always tough to play up here. When we win, it's always overtime or a close game. We've been fortunate of late, but it's always tough to win up here. They're playing well.
"This is the best team they've had up here for a while, probably because they have a good group of seniors and Saffold's a senior and he's been starting since he was a freshman."
KWC guards Kreig Oxley and Lucas Barker are expected to play Saturday against Wisconsin-Parkside despite suffering physical setbacks during the road trip. Oxley hurt his head on a 3-point attempt and was feeling symptoms in his neck on Friday after the pain in his head subsided. Barker woke up Friday morning feeling sick.
Lee admitted that the mental psyche of a team can start to falter after losses start to mount, but he said he's more focused on preparing his players and how they'll approach the game strategically.
"I think they're hungry," he said. "We've got to get better. We've got to get more efficient. We do the right thing about 60-to-70 percent of the time. That's just not good enough. If you're playing at home, sometimes you can get away with that. When you're on the road, especially in our division, you've got to play a lot better."
