Wabash opened North Coast Athletic Conference play with a 52-50 win at Wittenberg Wednesday evening.

The Little Giants (4-1, 1-0 NCAC) rallied from a three-point deficit with seven minutes left to play after holding a nine-point advantage in the early minutes of the second half. The victory is the second in school history for Wabash over the Tigers in Springfield, Ohio. The last win came in 2010.
 
"Road wins in any league are really, really hard to come by," Wabash head coach Kyle Brumett said. "This was very important for the growth of our team. Even though Sunday's loss to Rose-Hulman wasn't a conference game, it was a game against a somewhat familiar opponent. We didn't play very well and Rose did. To be able to bounce back and have the adversity of playing on the road at Wittenberg, a team that's historically one of the greatest Division III programs, I think it gave our guys some reassurance that what we're doing is working."


Austin Burton gave Wabash the early lead with the first of his team-best 3 three-pointers. The junior guard shared team-high scoring honors for the Little Giants with Daniel Purvlicis. Each tallied 13 points in the winning effort.
 
The Little Giants held a series of three-point leads before Wittenberg rode a 7-0 scoring run to move in front by four. Wabash started chipping away at the lead thanks to a jumper in the lane by Burton and a three-pointer from Kasey Oetting, who finished with 12 points. Oetting's triple tied the game at 16-16.
 
Wittenberg took another lead, but this time Burton banked in a long-range bomb to turn the scoreboard in the Little Giants' favor, 24-23. Zack Patton added a baseline jumper to stretch the advantage to three points. A layup and free throw by Daniel Scofield put Wabash up four points, but a jumper in the closing seconds by Jaelin Williams trimmed the advantage to two points at 29-27 at halftime.
 Purvlicis and Oetting started the second-half scoring for Wabash. Purvlicis opened the half with a layup --- one of his six made baskets out of seven attempts on the night. Oetting followed with another three-pointer. The duo added another pair of baskets to answer a quick Wittenberg scoring to make the score 40-31 in favor of the Little Giants with 15:18 remaining in the half.
 
Wabash scored only one time over the next nine-and-a-half minutes. The Tigers took advantage of the scoring drought by putting together a 14-2 run to take a 45-42 lead with 6:48 left on the clock. Kyle Aiton ended the run with his lone basket of the evening to draw Wabash within one point. That basket provided a spark for the Little Giants' offense. A pair of free throws from Oetting gave Wabash its final lead of the game with 5:02 left to play.
 
Burton tacked on his final three-pointer to stretch the lead to four. Wittenberg (1-5, 0-2 NCAC) got as close as one point and fired a shot to try and take the lead with 20 seconds left in the game, but a miss, a pair of free throws from Aiton and final free throw from Patton put Wabash up four in the closing seconds. The Tigers picked up the final points of the game on a last-second basket from Chad Roy to provide the final two-point margin.
 
"We tried to prepare our guys for the highs and lows, but we didn't handle those well on Sunday," Brumett said. "We really could not have handled them much better tonight. I could single out players and individual plays, but for example if you look at Kyle Aiton's line in the box score you're going to think he didn't play well. No one grew more from Sunday to today more than Kyle. He had the ball in his hands, he had their best defender --- who is bigger than Kyle --- on him. Kyle struggled at times, but he was so much better defensively than Sunday. He just kept playing through the ups and downs. That showed a lot of growth.
 
"All of our guys really stepped up and made some plays. Kyle allowed the game to play out and something good happened."

Wabash shot 41 percent from the field (18-of-44) and 38 percent from three-point range (5-of-13). The Little Giants held Wittenberg to 32 percent shooting overall (17-of-53) and just 2-of-19 from behind the arc for 10.5 percent. Williams scored 18 points in the losing effort for Wittenberg. Shane Edwards added 12.
 
The Little Giants return to action Saturday at home against Oberlin College. Tipoff at Chadwick Court is set for 3 p.m.