Men's Basketball | 11/12/2015 10:53:00 AM
ELLENSBURG, Wash (Nov. 12) – The Central Washington University men's basketball team will travel North to Burnaby, Canada to play in the 2015-16 season opener versus a Great Northwest Athletic Conference foe - Simon Fraser University.
The Wildcats are coming off an impressive home opener that saw the Wildcats outlast Whitman College last Saturday in a 98-93 overtime win.
"I thought playing Whitman was a good start for our guys," Head Coach
Greg Sparling said. "They showed a lot of maturity by coming back from behind and winning.Especially when their player hit a big three like that to tie it."
Senior guard
Joey Roppo led the way with 26 points in 40 minutes of action and preseason All-GNAC selection,
Joseph Stroud, led the frontline for the Wildcats with 20 points, 10 rebound and eight blocks.
"It was nice to see Roppo get going," Sparling said. "He's a guy that's been here and improved each year. We're expecting big things out of him and he's one of those guys that brings it every day."
Senior
Gary Jacobs registered 18 points in the win over the Missionaries and fellow guard,
Naim Ladd, pitched in 21 points in 28 minutes.
The Wildcats committed 17 turnovers last Saturday and Sparling said that is one areas that needs to get better.
"A lot of our turnovers were silly," Sparling said. "Half of those were passes that were too fast or trying to thread the needle. But, that's the great thing about film, you can clean up the mistakes and I think they're might have been some first game jitters."
Simon Fraser has lost its first two contest of the season dropping games to Thompson River University and the University of British of Colombia. Simon Fraser is averaging 63.5 points per game while allowing 87.5 points per game.
Leading the scoring attack for SFU is guard JJ Pankratz. The 6-foot-6 guard erupted for 21 points in the team's last game versus UBC. Aiding Pankratz in the scoring effort is Michael Harper who averages 13 points while dishing out 4.5 assists per game and Oshea Gaisey who averages 12 points per game.
"This will be our first road trip with the guys," Sparling said. "It's going to be a little different with the 1 p.m. start because it eliminates some of our prep, but we're going to go up there and see what we can do."
