The 2010-2011 men’s basketball season came to an end this past weekend on the road with the Loggers going 1-1 in their two-game set with Lewis and Clark and George Fox. Puget Sound dropped a heart-breaker to the Pioneers of Lewis and Clark on Friday in overtime, but rebounded on Saturday to finish out the season with a close win over the Bruins.
Junior Kaleb Shelton (Tacoma,Wash.) posted an excellent 26-point performance in the Loggers’ 89-85 loss to the Pioneers. The battle went back and forth throughout the game and eventually went to overtime after the Loggers relinquished a 13-point second-half lead despite Shelton’s impressive scoring.
Puget Sound came out hot in the extra period, jumping out to an early lead on the strength of two layups from freshman Malcolm Colbert (Post Falls, Idaho) and a three-pointer from Shelton.
However, the Pioneers put together an unanswered nine-point run to take the lead and cap off the victory.
On Saturday, it was the Loggers who utilized a second-half comeback to pick up the 66-63 victory in their match-up with George Fox.
Junior Anthony Gittens (Tacoma, Wash.) recorded a double-double and Shelton posted a game-high 20 points to help propel Puget Sound to victory. Coach Justin Lunt praised his young perimeter shooters, commenting that sophomore Caleb Gauff (Sacramento, Calif.) and Colbert “really were X-factors”.
Despite having such a young core group of players, the Loggers had a fair amount of success this year, going 10-15 overall and 7-9 in the Northwest Conference play.
With so many returning players, next season’s outlook should be overwhelmingly positive for Puget Sound.
“I feel that we have really high expectations for next season. We gained a lot of experience this season so we should be a big contender for the conference title and make a run in the national tournament. It’s big that we had so many underclassmen get a lot of experience this year,” junior Ryan Rogers (Tacoma, Wa.) said. “It is going to pay off next season when we close out the tough games that we didn’t seem to close out this year.”
Junior Edric Egberuare (San Jose, Calif.) also shared Rogers’ enthusiasm for next season, commenting “With only one senior gone we should definitely be at the top of the conference. This year, even though we didn’t get the results we wanted, we hung with and could have beaten all the top teams. With everybody getting in some action this year that should help us a lot next year with closing out games.”
As this season comes to a close, it is certain that next year’s season of Logger basketball will be highly anticipated.