Kentucky Wesleyan College Athletics

Game notes

Kentucky Wesleyan will travel to Detroit for the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference / Great Midwest Athletic Conference Challenge this weekend. The Panthers will play host Wayne State on Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m. CT, followed by Tiffin on Sunday at 1 p.m. CT. The Panthers are coming off solid play from two exhibition games against Western Kentucky and Louisville.

Coach Happy Osborne discussed the Panthers exhibition games, "We are very thankful for the opportunity to play in those games. Hopefully we made them a little bit better too. C.J. Blackwell has been playing well, and he's shot the ball well. I'm pleased with him and I think that he has matured a lot. He's one of our captains and he's doing a solid job.

"Jordan Jacks was unbelievable against Louisville with 12 rebounds. Ken-Jah Bosley and Marcus Fillyaw both had really good games too. Our bench has helped us tremendously as well"

Wayne State was predicted to finish in fourth place in the GLIAC South, and is coming off of a 5-20 season. The Warriors return their second and third leading scorers from last season in Michael Lewis and Clark Bishop.

Tiffin was selected to finish in seventh place in the GLIAC South division and is coming off an 8-21 season from last year. The Dragons return their leading scorer from last year Khaleal McCormick, who averaged 16.2 points per game in 17 contests before a season-ending injury.

Osborne on this weekend's matchups, "We have a huge challenge ahead against Wayne State, and then Tiffin on Sunday. Wayne State has historically been one of the top programs in the GLIAC, and we know that we are definitely going to have our hands full come Saturday.

"I feel like we are starting to grow as a team. Being able to be tested against such great length in facing Western and Louisville hopefully will have us prepared for Wayne State" Osborne said.

Osborne on what the team needs to improve on, "We have got to improve our ball-screen defense. We need to do a better job of keeping the ball out of the middle of the floor, and we need to communicate better. We also need to become more cohesive offensively. There is so much where we can still improve on."