The anticipation and energy was high on Tuesday night for Wabash College's season opener against the Blackburn College Beavers. The Little Giants dropped the opening game, 75-66.
 
"We did a bunch of really good stuff but none of it showed up on the scoreboard," Wabash head coach Kyle Brumett said. "Sometimes that is a hard thing for young players to understand but that is all we have."
 
Sophomore Evan Frank had a team high 16 points while adding in nine rebounds. Sophomore Logan White had an excellent 12 rebounds, eight offensive, and posted 10 points to give him Wabash's first double-double of the season.
 
"They did a good job," Brumett said. "Logan brings a lot of energy. He is a great rebounder, not a good rebounder.He is growing into a really good defender. Both of these guys played really hard tonight and I cannot fault their efforts."
 
To complete the sophomore foursome, Ronald Ryan had six points with four assists in his first career start. Duncan Roy scored eight points along with four assists, as well.
 
The other starter for Wabash was freshman Colton Garland, who scored eight points in his first career game. Freshman Harrison Hallstrom had six points and five boards off the bench.
 
Despite the youth of Wabash, the team started out the game by taking a 13-2 lead at the 15 minute mark in the first half. Six turnovers led to Blackburn closing the gap to 40-37 at the half. Wabash came out in the second half battling hard and once they lost the lead they did not trail by more than three until there were 12 minutes left in the game.
 
Blackburn then went on an 11-0 run over a span of four minutes to take the lead 62-53. This put Wabash in a hole that an inexperienced team could not crawl out of.
 
"We cannot try and make excuses," White said. "Some of these guys have never seen athletes like those before. They started four seniors and we started four sophomores and a freshman and it is going to be like that most of the year. We will keep improving every game."
 
The press started to get to Wabash at the end of the game as they committed five turnovers in the final five minutes of the game.
 
Despite the loss the Little Giants played very well at times in the game and pulled down 23 offensive rebounds which led to 25 second chance points.
 
Wabash also has some work to do in key areas such as free throw shooting as they went 7-for-23 from the line in the game.
 
"The fact that we got to the free throw line twenty-three times is a really good thing," Brumett said. "Those are all points we should get sixty-five to seventy-five percent of the time. When you get only thirty percent of those, it is a different game."
 
The team also turned the ball over 19 times leading to 31 points for the Beavers.
 
"We have a bunch of guys playing more than they ever have played before," Brumett said. "It is just careless and sometimes when you are tired you have lack of oxygen to the brain and sometimes you make careless turnovers."
 
The Little Giants will face Rust College this upcoming Saturday at 4 p.m. in the Black Tie Classic hosted by Birmingham-Southern University. They will play the host school the following day at 4 p.m.
 
"We are going to be pressed again in our next game," Brumett said. "A lot of tonight was mental and they will learn from the mistakes they made. It is a long season, there is no panic and we are going right back to work."