Eagles Start Strong, Hang on to Beat National Champions

Rochester, MN - On Monday, the Emmaus Eagles men's basketball team hit the road for their first game of the season. Having coasted to a 79-66 win in the annual alumni game just 2 days earlier, the Eagles knew much more would be required of them if they were to come out on top against reigning national champions, the Crossroads College Knights. However, on paper, both these teams were completely different than last year: Emmaus only returned 3 players from the previous year and Crossroads lost their leading scorer. Having scouted the team the previous week, Coach Wilkerson told his team that it was Crossroads' game to lose. "I really felt that if the guys played the type of defense that we knew they were capable of, Crossroads would have trouble scoring". Assistant Coach Joel Smith, also communicated before the game that if the Eagles came out and built an 8-12 point lead, the rest of the game should go smoothly.

The Eagles did exactly that. Playing a near perfect half in terms of defense, they only allowed 19 points before the horn blew to send them into the locker room. On the offense end, patience and execution were key in picking apart the Knights' defense. An early scare came when freshmen Matthew Tomlinson came down on the foot of a defender. Despite wanting to continue playing, Coach Wilkerson chose to keep him out. "Matthew is more valuable than one game. The possibility of him hurting himself worse was not worth putting him back in." Even with this setback, the Eagles finished on a 24-8 run to end the half and headed to the locker room with the score 38-19, in favor of the Eagles.

The second half was a different story. The Knights kicked up the intensity with their press defense and caused several early turnovers, resulting in easy baskets for Crossroads. Having never seen this type of pressure, several members of the Eagles had their nerves get the better of them, which caused Coach Wilkerson to call a couple of timeouts to remind them to calm down and be patient. "We had seen from the first half that if we took our time and found the open man, we could easily beat the press". Despite the encouragement and reinforcement, Crossroads continued to chip away at the lead. As the lead fell to only seven with a few minutes remaining, our captains, Skyler Sandry and Caleb Ruter, showed their leadership by taking care of the ball and hitting some key free throws. As the last shot by Crossroads was off target, Ruter dribbled out the ball to end the game. Coach Wilkerson encouraged his team to give respect to Crossroads and to have good attitudes in the victory. "The Knights are the national champions and until another team is crowned, they should continue to be looked at as such. They can be a deadly team when they apply pressure and, in some regards, we are fortunate to be leaving with a victory. I am very proud of the way everyone on our team fought through adversity and held to win this game. Hopefully, this opens some eyes that our guys are not going to go down without a fight."

Caleb Ruter led all scorers with 23 points while freshman Nathan Davidson had the game's only double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. Skyler Sandry was a couple rebounds and assists away from a triple double as he finished with 10 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists.