Tigers go out with a bang in season finale against Bridgewater College, 76–34
Hampden-Sydney basketball defeats the Bridgewater Eagles to wrap up their regular season.
Hampden-Sydney defeated Bridgewater by a 42-point margin Saturday Feb. 20, the largest point margin in the ODAC this season. The Eagles’ 34 points was an ODAC season-low.
The Hampden-Sydney dominated in the first half, only allowing 13 points for the Eagles. Hampden-Sydney junior from Williamsburg, Va., Jake Duncan, found his sharpshooting groove again, scoring 80 percent outside the arch in the first half after barely making his average the past five games.
Junior JaVonte Reddick two three-pointers for himself, averaging 66 percent in the first half, while freshman Gray Cheers also contributed one to the combined 52.9 percent Tiger three-pointer average in the first half.
The Eagles shot 16.7 percent from beyond the arch at the end of the first half and allowed for eight turnovers.
The Tigers maintained a 30-point lead over the Eagles for the entire second half. Duncan added another three-pointed, while Senior Mike Murray led with six assists in his last regular season home game. In their last timeout, against Randolph-Macon College, he broke the program record for 410 assists and is now leading with 423 total assists in the regular season.
Senior Mitch Owens had five rebounds and four assists in his last regular season home game. He reflected on his senior season at Hampden-Sydney, “We have a lot of young kids that are incredibly talented and as you could see today, I didn’t need to score as much.”
Hampden-Sydney head coach, Dee Vick, said, “He’s just a great person, it’s kindof hard to put into words. He’s a difficult matchup for your opponents because he’s so tall, but he can also shoot from the perimeter and it allows up to do so many things.”
Cheers and freshman Andrew Evans both added seven points to the final score. Hampden-Sydney junior Zack Tabrani scored his first points of the season, shooting a three-pointer that resulted in untamed excitement from Hampden-Sydney’s bench.
Bridgewater finished the game with a 19 percent overall shooting average. Bridgewater sophomore Logan Seacrist was the only Eagle with double digits, ending the game with 11 points.
Last time these two met, the Tiger fell to the Eagles 70–55. The tigers only made 31 percent of their shot attempts, while Bridgewater shot 44 percent for the game.
Bridgewater freshmen dominated the court with 24 total points, but this game he was quiet. Case was coming fresh-off a five-game injury reserve and was visibly having a difficult time getting back into the swing of things, only scoring five points and one rebound by the end of the game.
“Your first game back is always tough, you know…getting used to things again and it can also mess up your chemistry a bit because they’ve been used to playing without them and now they have them back so some guys that were getting minutes aren’t getting minutes now and that probably disrupted them,” said Vick.
Owens stated, “We’ve had a lot of criticism from trustees, students, and alumni asking what the heck’s going on, you guys aren’t playing well and it’s kind of tough to come with that negative criticism coming form your own side. So I’m really happy the way we’ve finished out this week of the regular season, beating Macon and beating this team by a large amount. That’s pretty much all Mike and I really wanted was to get a big win and get some momentum before our last tournament.”
Hampden-Sydney will host Bridgewater in the first round of the ODAC tournament, Feb. 23rd at 7pm.