Wabash ran past the visiting Illinois Tech Scarlet Hawks 75-57 Tuesday night at Chadwick Court.
 
Leading the charge for the Little Giants in the scoring column was senior Daniel Purvlicis with 18 points and freshman Johnny Jager with 19 points. Wabash had a battle on their hands in the first half, playing a young and dangerous Illinois Tech team.  
 
The Little Giants battled back and forth with Illinois Tech throughout the first half, eventually taking a six-point lead into the locker room at halftime. Turnovers and fouls plagued Wabash throughout the game. Illinois Tech took advantage of those turnovers primarily in the first half. The Scarlet Hawks were propelled by a perimeter offense.
 
"We just needed to play," Wabash head coach Brumett commented regarding the first half. "You just beat up on each other in practice everyday and with our young group we are going to soak up every opportunity we have to play against someone else and learn from it." Coach Brumett attributed his team's slow start in the first half to the fact that this was many of his players' first twenty minutes of college basketball. " With all the information that we were giving our guys through scouting reports and schemes, especially defensively, we forgot what really makes us good offensively."
 
What continued to make the Little Giants tick offensively was senior 2015 First Team All-Conference forward Daniel Purvlicis. Wabash scored 44 points, 59% of their final score, in the paint. Purvlicis was a huge part of that statistic, chalking up 18 of those points for himself.
 
"Overall, it was reassuring," Purvlicis said. It was incredibly important for us as a young team to come out and find success. As a team, we have some quick fixes and some not so quick fixes that we will work on going forward, but to start the season off 1-0 is huge for us."
 
Wabash came out in the second half much stronger on the scoring side, pulling away from Illinois Tech with 13:00 left to play. Part of the Little Giants lead expansion was a result of the play by freshman guard Johnny Jager.
 
Jager scored 19 points in his collegiate home debut to leadWabash in the scoring column. The freshman guard was quick to credit his senior teammate, "It's easy to find space when the defense is so focused on stopping someone like Purv [Purvlicis]." 
 
Jager was also quick to touch on what plagued Wabash throughout the night: turnovers. "We have to handle the ball a lot better. As a guard I have to increase assists and that happens by getting the ball to the hot guy, and make sure Purv gets his touches in the paint."
 
Wabash finished with 19 total turnovers in its first contest of the season, and will need to decrease that amount significantly as they start of this upcoming weekend against a very good Defiance, the team Brumett coached prior to coming to Wabash, in the opening game of the Lee Pfund Tournament at Wheaton College. The Little Giants play Defiance at 5:30 p.m. Friday. George Fox University plays Wheaton in game two of the two-day tourney.  
 
"We are playing a team that is used to winning this weekend, so it will be a challenge but I don't think they have as much depth as we do," Brumett said. We are still learning how to play together as a team. The cool thing about the tournament is that it helps you prepare for the conference tournament, which is the most important thing. You don't have a whole lot of opportunities to win a trophy, and this is a chance for us."