anybody going to post the...

[jmg1984]

tulsa world artices about yesterdays game

[tmh8286]

On the way . . .

[tmh8286]

ORU breaks loss streak

By MIKE BROWN World Sports Writer

1/31/2006

Team effort, defense help Eagles defeat UMKC after a four-game skid.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It was hard to sort out the heroes in Oral Roberts University's key 74-56 basketball win at Missouri-Kansas City on Monday night.

Almost every Golden Eagle who stepped on the floor had a hand in breaking UMKC's four-game winning streak at Kemper Arena.

"You could see it across the board, a real team effort," said senior center Mickey Michalec. "Not one player had 20 or 25. It was nine points, seven points, five points. Chris Riouse did a great job of shooting and our defense did a great job on Quinton Day and Tim Blackwell."

Riouse tied a season high with four 3-pointers, all in the first half, pacing the Eagles to a 28-19 halftime lead they never relinquished, and ORU's defenders kept Day and Blackwell, UMKC's best offensive players, from turning it into a down-to-the-wire shootout.

Day scored 26 points, but ORU's 6-foot-7 Larry Owens and 6-foot-9 Yemi Ogunoye made him work for everything he got. He made 8-of-26 shots, including three treys, and scored 7-of-8 from the foul line.

"If he takes 26 shots to get 26 points, you've done a heckuva job," said ORU coach Scott Sutton.

ORU's 5-foot-9 Jonathan

Bluitt held the 6-foot-4 Blackwell to four points on 2-of-9 shooting, and UMKC's other players could manage only 10-of-33 from the field.

Michalec had 11 points and 11 rebounds, notching his first double-double of the season. He combined with Caleb Green and Larry Owens to give the Eagles a 50-29 rebounding edge.

Green had 15 points and nine rebounds and Owens had 13 rebounds with six points, four assists and two steals.

"They're a physical team, and if you don't get physical with them, you're going to be on the floor a lot," Green said. "We wouldn't have won if we hadn't hit the boards like we did today. They beat us four times in a row, so it was good to kind of get that monkey off our backs."

ORU hadn't beaten the Kangaroos since Jan. 3, 2004, the 12th game of Green's freshman year.

"It was a great win," Sutton said. "Our defense was good, especially in the first half. I thought we did a great job on Blackwell and made Day work for everything he got."

Ogunoye and Owens took turns on the explosive 6-foot-1 Day and gave him few open shots that he didn't create for himself with breathtaking pivots, spins and drives.

"Our coaches used our taller players to guard me in practice," Day said. "I expected that. I didn't have a lot of open looks, but I'm used to shooting with a hand in my face."

ORU (12-9, 7-2) ended a two-game conference road streak and stayed a game behind first-place Indiana-Purdue in the Mid-Continent Conference. UMKC (9-11, 6-4) shot only 29 percent in posting their lowest point total since a 77-55 loss to Wichita State on Dec. 17.

Like most other Mid-Con teams are bound to try, UMKC started the game in zone with the intention of suffocating Green, but Riouse hit his first three 3-point attempts and ORU was off and running at 20-8.

"When people are playing zone, our guards have to find windows and places where they can hurt the zone," Green said. "We had to knock down shots and that's what we did."

Day scored seven points in an 11-3 run that got the Kangaroos within four, but ORU scored the final five points of the half and it was 28-19. Riouse hit his fourth 3-pointer and Green dunked with a pass from Vealy for his first basket of the game.

Green got his next four points more quickly when the second half started. He opened with a jumper, then dunked with an assist from Bluitt. Michalec also hit a jumper and ORU led 34-21.

UMKC cut the lead to eight, and then nine, but Green caused a steal that Bluitt turned into a three-point play for a 41-27 lead and the Eagles started putting the game out of reach. Ehambe's 3-pointers came in a 9-2 run that lifted ORU's lead to 53-36 with 8:31 left.

[tmh8286]

Women: Ladies taken out by Eagles

By Staff Reports

1/31/2006

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Oral Roberts jumped to a 17-5 lead before cruising to a 72-50 win over Centenary Monday night at the Gold Dome.

Elisha Turek led all players with 19 points and nine rebounds, as she shot 7-of-12 from the field and a perfect 5-of-5 from the free-throw line. She added two steals and a block in 27 minutes.

The game was tied 5-5 early, but ORU (10-9 overall, 4-4 Mid-Con) responded with a 12-0 spurt that put them up 17-5 just over six minutes into the game.

A pair of Jenny Hardin free throws, followed by a Hardin lay-in, extended the Golden Eagles' lead to 19 points, 28-9, with 6:03 to play before the half.

Hardin finished with nine points, four rebounds, and three assists.

The Golden Eagles finished the night shooting 48.1 percent from the floor, while the Ladies connected on just 32.1 percent of their attempts.

ORU forced 18 Centenary turnovers, turning them into an extra 25 points.

[tmh8286]

ORU Notebook: Role reversal

By MIKE BROWN World Sports Writer

1/31/2006

There were no Missouri-Kansas City players taunting ORU's student section, as Kangaroos Michael Watson and Mike English did two years ago in a UMKC win at the Mabee Center.

This time, ORU students did the taunting. About 100 made the four-hour trip from Tulsa and sat in an end zone section at Kemper Arena.

With time running down and UMKC fans filing out, ORU's fans stood and chanted "We're not leaving, we're not leaving, we're not leaving."

ORU led by 20 at the time.

200 Club: Monday's game was Scott Sutton's 200th as ORU's head coach. In his seventh season as head coach and 11th with the program, Sutton is 112-88, second in school history in career coaching wins.

Only career wins leader Ken Trickey (1969-74, 1987-93) has coached more (330 games).

State ties: Jeremiah Hartsock of Bartlesville scored four of UMKC's first six points Monday night on two jumpers and finished with a career-high eight points in ORU's 74-56 win.

Dee Ayuba of Edmond and Seminole State College had eight points and five rebounds for the Kangaroos, while Brent Stephens of Jay came off the bench to score six points with two rebounds.

Higher intensity: The Eagles and Kangaroos really do play harder against each other than they do against other teams. So said UMKC guard Tim Blackwell.

"It's another level on both sides," he told the Kansas City Star. "When you watch film of other games and then film of when we play Oral Roberts, you can tell everybody steps up to another level."

Change of venue: UMKC's customary home site of Municipal Auditorium was being used for a retail convention, so the Kanga roos hosted their second of three games in Kemper Arena.

They played Eastern Illinois at Kemper in December and will host Chicago State there next Monday.

Monday's game was the first Kemper meeting between ORU and UMKC since the Kangaroos eliminated the Eagles from the Mid-Continent Conference tournament in first-round games in 2003 and 2004.

[tmh8286]

From the Kansas City Star:

Oral Roberts stuffs Kangaroos

UMKC shoots just 29 percent against Golden Eagles

By DAVID BOYCE

The Kansas City Star

Oral Roberts found holes inside and outside in UMKC?s zone defense. The Kangaroos? offense was even worse.

UMKC had only five assists for the entire game and got outrebounded by 21 in a 74-56 loss Monday night at Kemper Arena.

?My biggest concern is we took too many jump shots,? UMKC coach Rich Zvosec said.

?I don?t think the score was indicative of the game. If we made some shots, it?s a different story.?

Well, that?s true. The game probably would have been closer had UMKC shot better than 29 percent.

UMKC?s dismal performance ended a four-game winning streak the Kangaroos had over Oral Roberts. UMKC dropped to 9-11 overall and 6-4 in the Mid-Continent Conference.

?I don?t think they came out trying to break the streak we had against them,? said UMKC guard Quinton Day, who finished with 26 points. ?They were coming out to win. They were knocking shots down, and we weren?t able to stop them.?

The loss also ended any hopes of UMKC finishing in first place. Oral Roberts, which is 12-9 and 7-2, remains in second place, behind conference leader IUPUI, which is 8-1 in the league.

Nothing about the Kangaroos? effort was good in an important home conference game. UMKC faced a double-digit deficit for nearly the entire second half.

UMKC made a 6-0 run at one point and closed to 53-42. That one second-half highlight was extremely short. Oral Roberts quickly returned to a 17-point advantage.

?They beat us four times,? said Oral Roberts junior Caleb Green, who finished with 15 points and nine rebounds. ?Even though they don?t have the same players as they did when they went on that streak, they still beat us four times. We wanted to break that habit.?

Once the Golden Eagles went up by 17 points with 4 minutes, 42 seconds left, UMKC was essentially done.

?We knocked down shots, and they never came out of that zone,? Green said.

One of the key things a zone is supposed to accomplish is taking away easy inside baskets. On the last field goal of the first half, Green slammed home an uncontested dunk, giving the Golden Eagles a 28-19 halftime lead.

The most discouraging part about the Kangaroos? zone was that Oral Roberts found plenty of holes outside, making five of nine from behind the three-point arc in the first half.

Chris Riouse stuck four three-pointers on the Kangaroos, and one gave Oral Roberts an 18-8 lead midway through the first half.

Oral Roberts? lead grew to 21-10 before UMKC found enough offense from Day and Dee Ayuba, closing to 23-19.

But overall, it was a miserable first half for the Kangaroos, who shot only 24 percent from the field.

But Zvosec said he thought UMKC played solid defense, holding Oral Roberts to under 80 points.

?You?ve got to pick your poison,? Zvosec said. ?We held them as long as we could, considering we couldn?t make shots.?

[Texasgrip]

From the Kansas City Star:

Oral Roberts stuffs Kangaroos

?My biggest concern is we took too many jump shots,? UMKC coach Rich Zvosec said.

?I don?t think the score was indicative of the game. If we made some shots, it?s a different story.?

Uh, yeah. That's pretty much always a true statement.

...c'mon coach. Just say you got your butts handed to you and be done with it!

[jmg1984]

thanks tmh see ya in march