NEWBERRY — The injury riddled Wolves limped into their home finale hoping to snap their seven game losing streak, but came up short. Newberry College(10-17, 6-15 SAC) fell 76-61 to Catawba(20-7, 15-6 SAC) at home on Wednesday, Feb. 25th.
The Wolves got their veteran point guard Drew Robinson back in the lineup for their home regular season finale, but were down starting center Malakhi Stremlow, which sums up the second half of their season.
Catawba got off to a hot start to begin the game and took an early 9-3 lead. The Wolves stormed back behind the hot shooting from redshirt freshman guard Kayzzin McDowell and senior guard Houston Jones. Newberry was able to tie the game at 11-11 before Catawba went on a run to take control of the first half.
The Indians run started when star forward Drake Downs went out for an extended period of time after taking a shot to the back of the head on a layup attempt. He did return towards the end of the first half, but sat out for eight minutes of game time while he was being checked out.
The bench was able to weather the storm and keep the deficit under double digits. Downs came back to the floor with the Wolves down 24-18, but he had no answer for the Indians hot shooting in the first half. The visitors finished the first half shooting 45% and closed the half of a 10-2 run.
Catawba led 38-30 at halftime. Things started off slow for both teams on the offensive end to begin the second half as each team were scoreless for two and half minutes of game time. Newberry was able to break the early second half scoring drought, but wasn’t able to contain the Indians for too much longer.
The two teams went back-and-forth but Catawba was able to build up a 13-point lead, 53-40, before the Wolves were forced to call a timeout to regroup. Newberry responded well after the timeout with a 8-2 run of their own to cut the deficit down to single digits, 55-48, with 9:39 left on the game clock.
Unfortunately, the home team could not sustain their momentum built up from their run and the Indians held Newberry to just 13 points for the remainder of the game and outscored them 21-13. Te Wolves held the Indians’ leading scorer Jordan Simpson in check for the game. He scored just eight points in this contest, which was slightly down from his 12.8 points per game average.
Catawba still had four players score in double figures and their bench outscored Newberry’s bench 28-12. Downs finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds. McDowell continued his good season with 14 points and Jones had eight points.
“Well were really just trying to keep them out of the paint and unfortunately we didn’t do a great job of it but we fought. We are down three guys, two starters, and Drew came back tonight with one hand and one arm. That just shows the fight, the heart and resilience of these guys. They wanted to try to pull one out and win but we fought,” said Wolves head coach Marcus Kirkland.
Newberry College traveled to Harrogate, TN on Saturday, Feb. 28th to face off against no.10 Lincoln Memorial. They concluded the season with a 108-66 loss.
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