Pioneers too much for UWO

The UW-Oshkosh Titans men’s basketball team fell behind early against the UW-Platteville Pioneers and dropped its sixth straight game to the Pioneers on Wednesday evening at Kolf Sports Center 83-69. 

The game featured two of the top scorers in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with Oshkosh’s DJ Marsh (averaging 22 points per game) and Platteville’s Curt Hanson (averaging 20.1 points per game). 

Marsh and Cory Wittwer led the Titans in scoring with 25 and 21 points, respectively, and the Titans never led during the game. 

“I really don’t have any more answers besides just inexperience in our system,” head coach Ted Van Dellen said. “And lack of consistency or execution in the system. The two guards (Hanson and Mike Shaw) and the one big guy (Eric Wall) just pounded us, and that’s just system breakdowns.”

The Titans dropped its third game in a row at home and came out sluggish to start the game.

“The last couple games here at home we haven’t come out with the energy we needed to,” Wittwer said.

The Pioneers raced out to a 12-point lead in the first half before the Titans were able to start closing the gap. Greg Schrimpf, playing in his third game back from heart surgery, connected on a rare four point play, a three point basket followed by a free throw after being fouled, Marsh scored 13 points in the first half, but going into halftime the Titans trailed 41-30. 

The Titans started the second half quickly with a three-pointer by Schrimpf to close the gap to eight, but the Pioneers went on a 12-2 run after that to take firm control of the game and hand Oshkosh a 83-69 defeat. 

Platteville took advantage of its opportunities in the second half, making 33 of 37 free throws and shot 6 of 11 from 3-point range. 

Hanson, Shaw and Wall combined for 65 of the Pioneers 83 points and proved to be too much for the Titans to handle defensively.

“Greg (Schrimpf) was on No. 10 (Hanson), that was the guy he was matched up against and No. 10 just abused him,” Van Dellen said. “Greg got taught a pretty valuable lesson by a very tough senior tonight.”

The loss drops Oshkosh to 9-11 (4-7 in the WIAC) and the Titans are looking to get back on the winning track this weekend in Menomonee to face UW-Stout before heading to La Crosse next Wednesday night to play the Eagles in its last conference road game of the season.
 

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out