Wabash made it difficult for the Illinois Institute of Technology to engineer baskets Wednesday night. The Little Giants held the visiting Scarlet Hawks to 17.1 percent from the field in a 71-25 Wabash win.

"The nice thing about this is that everybody got extended minutes," Coach Kyle Brumett said. "The guys that came in really played like the guys that are regularly in the lineup, and that's what we're looking for up and down the roster."

Every Little Giant was aware of Samuel Rarick, Illinois Tech's leading scorer at 25.8 points-per-game entering the game. A team effort held him to six points on 2-of-12 shooting.

"He can shoot the three, gets fouled a lot, and is able to drive Illinois Tech both ways so he's a tough cover," Brumett said. "We made a big deal about him. I thought it helped that we played him already even though we didn't do a good job (the first time). Keeping him to six points and limiting him to only eight shots is really encouraging."

Rarick had a 31-point output against Wabash in November.

"It's an odd time to have a game like this," Brumett said. "Typically, you get your non-conference games finished early but this one got squeezed in. I was really happy with the way our guys bounced back with two grueling games over the weekend."

After a total of 90 minutes of basketball on Saturday and Sunday against Hiram and Allegheny over the weekend, the Little Giants might have been due for a letdown Wednesday night. However, Wabash steadily built a 14-0 lead in the early going as Illinois Tech didn't score until almost seven minutes into the game.

"I thought our guys did a good job of turning their focus from the negatives Sunday and getting dialed in to tonight's game," Brumett said. "We set a goal to not lose back-to-back games. We had that happen to us after we lost to Wooster, and then a tough one to Franklin. This was the next opportunity for us in that situation and we did a good job getting on the winning side tonight."

The Scarlet Hawks cut the early deficit to five, but a three pointer from Kyle Aiton and two from Austin Burton distanced the Little Giants. Wabash closed the first half on a 25-6 run to lead 39-15.

Illinois Tech made four field goals in the first half, and only connected on three attempts in the second.

Meanwhile Wabash (8-4) received scoring contributions from nine different players. Kasey Oetting led all scorers with 16 while Daniel Purvlicis scored 12. Burton had nine on three three-point makes.

Manish Suthar led Illinois Tech (0-13) with 12 points.

The Little Giants will return to North Coast Athletic Conference action Saturday at 3 p.m. when they travel to Denison.