Second-Half Rally Pushes Wabash Past Tigers

Crawfordsville, Indiana - Life on the road in college basketball is tough. For the second straight game, the Wittenberg men's basketball team learned that lesson the hard way as the host Wabash Little Giants rallied from a halftime deficit to beat the Tigers 68-63.

With the loss, Wittenberg fell out of the top spot in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) standings for the first time in three weeks. The Tigers dropped to 13-7 overall and 7-4 in the NCAC, one game behind Wooster, Denison and Wabash and one game ahead of DePauw. The Little Giants are 12-8 overall.

A 12-4 run, capped by an Eddie Brown (Lewis Center, OH / Olentangy Orange) just before the halftime buzzer, gave Wittenberg a nine-point cushion heading into the final 20 minutes. Wabash closed that gap over the first six minutes of the second half, and from there the two teams traded blows until the final two minutes of the game. The Little Giants closed the game by outscoring their visitors 8-2 to turn a 61-60 Wittenberg lead into the final five-point margin of victory.

Trey Killens (Cincinnati, OH / Mason) led the way offensively again for the Tigers as he poured in 25 points to go along with five rebounds. Brown added 14 points and three boards, and Jeff Queen (Cincinnati, OH / LaSalle) added six points and a team-high eight rebounds.

For the game, Wittenberg shot 50 percent from the field, compared to 42.9 percent for Wabash. However, the Little Giants finished with nine more attempts, thanks in part to a 36-29 rebounding advantage, and Wabash made three more three-pointers.