Wabash came off a huge win last Friday at Earlham but could not continue its hot shooting Wednesday afternoon in North Coast Athletic Conference play versus the Allegheny College Gators. The Little Giants shot 36 percent from the floor while Allegheny shot 40 percent to steal a 68-62 win at Chadwick Court.
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Wabash defeated Earlham 101-63 on the road last Friday by shooting 61-percent from the field and 75 percent from three-point range.
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"The bottom line is that we aren't 38 points better than Earlham," Wabash head coach
Kyle Brumett said. "We played well and they didn't. Today we played bad. This team still has a lot to learn and guys still need to improve. We had a stretch of four games where we did a good job of following the plan and making shots when we were open.
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"There's no 'why did it happen today.' it's because we are not that much better than the teams we are going to play against to come out and not do what we are supposed to,"
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Wabash came out and trailed by as many as five points early in the first half before taking a 18-17 lead with 7:16 left in the first half. Allegheny responded with a 11-4 run before Wabash closed the gap to 28-26 at the half.
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Freshman
Harry Hallstrom led the Little Giants at the half with eight points.
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Wabash opened the second half slowly falling behind 41-32 with 15:07 left in the contest but they started to chip away at the lead. The Little Giants (6-6, 2-3 NCAC) tied the game at 45-all with 10:13 left and took their first lead since early in the second half with just under seven minutes left.
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Wabash boosted its lead to as much as three points but back-to-back triples by Liam Wilby and Evan Zabriski put Allegheny back in front. The Little Giants pulled ahead again but a turnover turned into a fast break lay-in for Allegheny and provided the Gators the 59-58 lead with 3:18 left, one that the visitors would not relinquish.
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Wabash shot much better from the floor in the final period, going 13-for-26 and scoring 36 points. But defensively the Little Giants was unable to muster up stops as Allegheny scored 40 points with 11 of those coming from the line in the six-point decision.
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"Hopefully we will learn from this a little bit but home losses in this league are not when you should be learning your lessons," Brumett said.
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Hallstrom finished with 16 points to lead the Little Giant squad and sophomore
Logan White added in a game high 10 rebounds to go with six points. Sophomore
Joey Lenkey came off the bench and gave Wabash 13 minutes of solid play hitting two important three-pointers. Sophomores
Dalton Vachon and
Ben Stachowski provided six and seven points respectively as reserves.
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Jamison Nee led Allegheny (4-8, 1-4 NCAC) with 21 points. Zabriski scored 14 and Jordan Rawls tossed in 13 points for the Gators.
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Wabash travels to Oberlin for a 3 p.m. game on Saturday.
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"They beat us twice last year and we have had trouble winning at Oberlin so that is a little bit of a learning curve for our sophomore group," Brumett said. "We have to play better. We can't go out and shoot 2-for-14 fromthree in the first half and think those are the best looks we are going to get."
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