Wabash blitzed the full court press applied by Indiana University-Northwest to the tune of 72-percent shooting on 12 assists in the second half for an 88-54 victory Monday night.

Daniel Purvlicis and Kyle Aiton provided most of the offensive damage. Purvlicis hit 11-of-12 shots for a 26-point effort. Aiton hit 4-of-5 three pointers as a part of an 18-point night. Kasey Oetting nearly picked up a triple-double, notching nine points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists.

The win came 52 hours after a difficult one-point loss (66-65) at Franklin Saturday afternoon.

"We didn't play real well Saturday and this is a quick turnaround playing two days later," Wabash head coach Kyle Brumett said. "That takes us out of our normal routine. We finished a lot of really good stuff tonight.

"We missed some makeable shots Saturday and lost by one point. We turned the ball over too many times. There are some good things about scoring 88 points and having 25 assists tonight. More than anything else we shot more free throws than they did, so we're actually trying to guard them without fouling. We held them to 34 percent shooting. They only had six assists for the game. That means defensively we're in their way. Saturday we just fouled too much."

Wabash raced out to an 11-2 lead in the first seven minutes before the Redhawks switched to a combination of full-court pressure and zone defense. The change resulted in an 11-1 run for IU-Northwest and a one-point lead for the visitors. The Little Giants picked up the play on both ends of the floor, jumping back in front by as many as 21 points in the opening period before settling for a 48-28 edge at halftime.

The Redhawks (6-9) got as close as 13 points in the first six minutes of the second half, but the red-hot Wabash team pushed the game out of reach by shooting 18-of-25 from the field against the full court trap.

"We talked a lot about their trapping and pressure in our walk through yesterday and today," Brumett said. "I think our guys tried to execute the things that we asked them to do. We handled it really well. We shot 72 percent in the second half. We finished at a higher rate. The pressure really worked against them."

Purvlicis was a perfect 7-for-7 on shot attempts in the second half. Six Little Giants all took shots without a miss --- Daniel Scofield (2-2), Oetting (1-1), Zack Patton (2-2), Marcus Kammrath (3-3), Hank Horner (1-1), and Jordan Wagner (1-1). Aiton handed out four his five assists in the second half, while three of Oetting's seven assist were recorded in the final 20 minutes.

Nate Flores came off the bench to score 13 points for IU-Northwest. Darrius Davis and JJ Pennington each finished with 10. Wabash held the Redhawks to 17-of-50 shooting from the field for 34 percent.
 
"When you can finish possessions on offense you make teams shoot the kind of percentage IU-Northwest shot tonight," Brumett added. "There's a lot of misses, so you get 31 defensive rebounds. People don't realize how often a team that gets offensive rebounds negates good defense. You can't be a good defensive team if you're not a good defensive rebounding team. That's who we are supposed to be. We needed to be better than we were at that Saturday."

Wabash will take a few days off to celebrate the semester break and holidays before returning to prepare for two key North Coast Athletic Conference home games in early January. The Little Giants play host to Hiram College Saturday, January 3 at 3 p.m. Allegheny College travels to Chadwick Court Sunday, January 4 for another 3 p.m. contest.