USF Gives Montana the Boot 76-57
By Mark Kramer
26 point games are quickly becoming the norm for USF Don Kruise Pinkins as he sunk one basket after another against the Montana Griz at War Memorial Gym Sunday afternoon. Montana had no answer for Kruise though one of their own, Jermaine Edmonds, who finished with 13 points, displayed a very consistent NBA range 3 point shot that was one of the bright spots in the game. Otherwise, the Griz were unable to provide much of a challenge to USF who held an 18 point lead at the half and never looked back.
Contributions from the remaining regular prongs of the USF scoring attack were Tim Derksen with 17 points and Mark Tollefson with 15 points. Matt Glover was the leading rebounder for the team with 9 rebounds. Glover added 5 assists and 1 steal as well. Corey Hilliard and Matt Christiansen saw more playing time which will be beneficial for calls off the bench in the months ahead when calm combined with skill from an upperclassman is needed on the floor.
Martin Breuning led Montana in scoring with 14 points and in rebounding with 8 boards just edging out Edmonds in the scoring department. Otherwise, the rest of the team were held to single digit scoring totals. Head Coach Travis DeCuire attributed the lackluster performance of his team on the “lack of intensity and maturity” given the relative youth of his team.
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USF travels to Colorado for their next game Wednesday, December 3, 2014 to what Coach Rex Walter calls a “hostile environment.” He hopes his team can secure a quality win against the Pac-12 team after losing to both Florida Gulf Coast University and Evansville last weekend. All three teams in Walter’s opinion are “Top 100 teams” so he is eager to apply the lessons learned from the only two losses for the Dons.
With the excellent scouting work of Associate Coach Luke Wicks and the ability of the Dons players to assimilate this information, the USF-Colorado game will provide another measure of the progress the Dons are making to ready themselves for the tough teams ahead in WCC conference play.