The University of Indianapolis men’s basketball team started their season with a 1-3 record. Last week, the men battled Lake Superior State and Hillsdale College, after their season opening tournament the previous weekend.
The men traveled to Salt Lake City, Mo. on Thursday to battle the Lakers but ended the game in a 107-116 loss. Lake Superior was ahead for most of the game, going into the half at 54-41. The Hounds were down 95-74 with seven minutes left to play in the fourth quarter, when they made a failed attempt at a last minute comeback. The Hounds made a 19-2 run, with threes from freshman guard Tate Hall, redshirt junior Alex Etherington and redshirt junior Ajay Lawton. The rally was not enough to take the lead from the Lakers, and the Hounds were sent home with a loss. Despite the loss, both junior guard Eric Davidson and sophomore forward Jesse Kempson reached new career highs of 35 and 28 points.
On Saturday, the team participated in another away game at Hillsdale College and suffered the second loss of the weekend. Junior forward Roderick Davis scored the first basket of the game with a layup in the first 30 seconds. Soon after, the Chargers took the lead that they would sustain for the remainder of the game. Hillsdale lead as much as 21 points in the second half, and the Hounds ended with a 70-89 loss.
The team began its season by hosting the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference/Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament Challenge. The team finished the tournament with a loss against the Ashland University Eagles but gained momentum with a win in its second game against the Lake Erie College Storm.
The Nov. 12 game against the Eagles proved to be a back-and-forth game for much of the first half, with the Eagles leading 31-30 going into the halftime break. In the second half, the Greyhounds made a run to take a 12-point lead. However, the Eagles made also made a run in the last 10 minutes and ultimately came back, beating the Greyhounds 70-64.
Junior guard D.J. Davis led the way for the Greyhounds in terms of scoring, with 16 points. Kempson also recorded 15 points on 6-13 shooting, as well as two blocks. He said he was disappointed about the loss but looking forward to the second game the following day.
“We’re all disappointed, but I feel like we all just need to take a look inside,” Kempson said. “We can’t get too down, we’ve got a game tomorrow. We’ve got [to] have amnesia, just forget about that. We have an opportunity to make a statement tomorrow to show that we’re better than we were today.”
According to Kempson, the Greyhounds underestimated the Eagles, hoping to come in and grab an easy win. Kempson said his hopes and goals for the rest of the season remained high and that he would love to come back and win a national championship.
“We’ve got the talent, we just haven’t put it together yet,” Kempson said. “We have a lot of new guys, and we have an opportunity to do that [win a national championship], but we’ve got to come to practice every day ready to go.”
Head Coach Stan Gouard was very disappointed with the Greyhound’s performance following the loss to the Eagles.
“I’m not happy about losing,” he said. “I’m not happy with the way we played. I’m not happy the way we executed. A lot of things didn’t go our way tonight, and we showed no fight. We didn’t do anything well tonight. We were breathing, that’s it. We did everything that you could possibly do bad. We did it wrong.”
The next day, the Hounds pulled out an 81-73 win against Lake Erie. For the second night in a row, Davis scored 16 points in the Greyhounds’ victory, while also recording two steals and two assists. Four other players recorded double-digit scoring totals: sophomore guard Jimmy King with 13 points and three assists; Hall with 12 points and a block; Davidson with 11 points; Davis with 10 points.
The Greyhounds’ next game will be on Nov. 26 against Kentucky State University. The game will take place in Frankfort, Ky,. beginning at 3 p.m.
