Dribbling from ‘downtown’

In the midst of an important stretch in its schedule the Pioneer men's basketball team continued its recent inconsistent play last week.

Playing two games against American Mideast Conference opponents, the Pioneers beat Houghton College at home but lost on the road at Roberts Wesleyan College.

In the game against Houghton, the Heatherington brothers, T.J. and Robbie, combined for 50 points, and Eric Johnson added 13 points to the effort.  Point Park also held a 40 to 30 advantage in rebounds and cruised to a win, 91-70.  With the victory, the team picked up their second AMC win of the season.

"We showed what we could actually do," senior guard and forward Johnson said about the Houghton game on the phone Thursday night.  "T.J. being the best point guard in the country just makes it a lot easier for all of us.  I think we fed off the crowd a lot."

Sophomore guard Robbie Heatherington offered another view on the win.

"We got out to an early lead and we just progressed from there on out," Robbie Heatherington said in a phone interview Wednesday night.

 The game against Roberts Wesleyan was a different story.  The Pioneers got off to a slow start scoring only 29 points in the first half, which was their lowest total in any half so far this season, and they found themselves down 29-38 at the half. 

 After the break, Roberts Wesleyan came out on fire and scored the first 13 points of the second half.  Roberts Wesleyan would eventually build a 22-point lead. 

With about 10 minutes to go in the game the Pioneers fought back to close their deficit to only two points.  However that would be as close as it got as the men fell, 79-69.

In the final 40 seconds, the game clock seemed to run off faster than it should have, prompting the officials to put 27 seconds back on the clock after time had expired, but in the end, it did not make a difference.

T.J. Heatherington led the team with 27 points and surpassed the 1000 point plateau for his career at Point Park.  He is the seventeenth Pioneer to reach that mark.    

The Pioneers are the highest scoring team in the AMC and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Division II, and the 69 points they scored against Roberts Wesleyan was a season low.

The win and loss last week prolonged a trend in which they have not been able to put more than one win together the Pioneers they had a five game win streak in mid-November.

 The Pioneers' AMC record now stands 2-3, while they move to 9-8 overall.

Although the team has been able to stay above the .500 mark overall, being able to improve the conference record is crucial because AMC standings determine playoff eligibility and positioning.

"Every game from here on out matters but you got to take it one game at a time.  Hopefully we can try to win this conference," junior guard Jimmy Taylor said in a phone interview Friday night.

Point Park has seven games, all against the AMC opposition, remaining on its schedule. The Pioneers will play Daemen College at home on Saturday, and then hit the road for three straight games.

"We're starting to pick it up here trying to string a couple [wins] together," Taylor said.

While the Pioneers have been inconsistent as of late, the team knows what to do to pull out wins.  As a team that prefers to play a fast-paced game and make games into high scoring affairs, the Pioneers rank number one in the nation with 91.3 points per game and will use this to their advantage.

"We lead the country in scoring.  I feel like everybody has to run with us," Johnson said.  "I think we control the tempo a lot.  Teams can't run with that."

When the Pioneers score more than 100 points, they have not lost a game but when scoring 90 plus points, they have only lost three times.

"We definitely want to start out with a lot of points on the board and get our chemistry together between our guards and forwards," Robbie Heatherington said.