WOOSTER, Ohio — The Wittenberg Tigers did what they do best - pound away on the inside at both ends of the floor - en route to a 63-46 victory over Ohio Wesleyan in the North Coast Athletic Conference Men's Basketball Tournament semifinals at the College of Wooster.
With the win, the Tigers improved to 24-3 overall and strengthened their case for an at-large berth in the upcoming NCAA Division III Tournament should they lose in the NCAC Tournament championship game. The title match against Wooster is scheduled for a 7 p.m. tip-off on the Scots home court.
Ohio Wesleyan, which had won eight of its last nine games, fell for the third time this season to the Tigers and bowed out of the 2005-06 season with an overall mark of 18-9. The Battling Bishops finished third in the NCAC regular season with a mark of 11-5.
The Tigers got off to a slow start, and by halftime the Bishops clung to a 26-25 lead and hope of upsetting sixth-ranked Wittenberg for just the second time since 1977. But Wittenberg got its act together in the second half, controlling the boards and pounding the ball inside to the dominating senior post tandem of Daniel Russ and Dane Borchers. Russ, the 2005 NCAC Player of the Year and Tournament MVP, scored a game-high 21 points and added six rebounds, five assists and two blocked shots to his stat sheet. Borchers finished with 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field and 3-of-3 from the free throw line, and a game-high 15 rebounds. He also had three blocks.
After a first half with five lead changes, the Tigers took the lead at the 16:45 mark of the second half on a three-point play by Borchers and never looked back. The lead stretched to 10 on a three-pointer by senior wing Phil Steffes at the 8:20 mark and it never moved below six points the rest of the way. The Tigers hit their last eight free throws in the final 3:14, part of an 18-of-21 performance from the line in the game.
Wittenberg outrebounded the Bishops by a whopping 49-25 in the game, including a 25-11 margin in the second half alone. Key to the win was defensive pressure, as the Tigers, the top defensive team in all of NCAA Division III, limited the red-hot Bishops to just 26 percent shooting from the field, including a paltry 6-of-26 from three-point range. OWU hit for 106 points in an NCAC Tournament quarterfinal win over Allegheny on Tuesday, but the Bishops joined a long list of teams held below their season scoring average against the Tigers.
OWU picked up just 12 points and two rebounds from its solid post tandem of Ben Chojnacki and Dustin Rudegeair, and both fouled out late in the game. Rudegeair's nine points were tops for the Bishops, who also picked up eight tallies each from Bryan King and Ted Uritus.
Wittenberg got a strong nine-point performance from Steffes, and senior wing Kenny Brady was solid as usual with seven points and nine rebounds. One point of concern for the Tigers was turnovers as they committed 18 in the game.