Red Storm win their 11th straight

DSC Red Storm's Kimball Payne
Kimball Payne, DSC Red Storm | Photo by Julie Buchanan, courtesy of Dixie State College of Utah

ST. GEORGE – The Red Storm, Dixie State College’s men’s basketball team, won their 11th straight game after beating Cal Baptist 77-59 Tuesday night at Burns Arena. The Red Storm used hot shooting and 30 bench points to improve to 18-4 overall and 13-1 in the Pac West.

The Red Storm only trailed for 30 seconds and that was 1-0, less then a minute into the game. Red Storm point guard Maurice Cole hit a jumper to give the Red Storm a 2-1 lead and they never looked back from there.

The Red Storm led by as many as 18 in the first half, shooting 48.28 percent from the field and 42.86 percent from the 3-point line. The only bad stat for the Red Storm was their free throw percentage, the Red Storm were 7-13 from the line in the first half. The Red Storm led by 13 points at the half.

The Red Storm lead was chipped away to start the second half and the Red Storm found themselves on the wrong side of a 9-0 run. The run brought the Red Storm lead to eight with just over 15 minutes to play.

The Red Storm got things going again, led by two former Region 9 players: Dalton Groskreutz who went to Snow Canyon High School and Derek Owen from Dixie High School. Groskreutz finished 4-5 from the field for nine points and Owen finished with a team-high 14 points shooting 5-6 from the field.

It wasn’t just the bench that got the Red Storm going, McKay Massey added 13 points and Cole finished with 11 points and five assists.

The Red Storm were able to push the lead to as many as 23 points in the second half.

The Red Storm play this same Cal Baptist team in Riverside, Calif., on Saturday. The Red Storm have to work on a few things before the take on Cal Baptist in a few days.

The Red Storm were out-rebounded 31-29 and gave up 16 second-chance points to Cal Baptist. A lot of that had to do with the Red Storm shooting over 56 percent from the field for the game and over 68 percent in the second half.

The Red Storm also needed to contain Justus Von Wright, who scored a game-high 18 points for Cal Baptist.

The Red Storm’s 11 game winning streak has them atop the Pacific Division of the Western Conference and almost a sho0-in for the NCAA tournament. The regional rankings come out tomorrow and if the Red Storm are in the top three in the West, many people around the school think they will have a chance to be the host of the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, but they will need help.

The Red Storm are currently just outside of the D-2 top 25 receiving five votes. The 25th ranked team has 12 votes.

For more Dixie State Red Storm talk, tune into Blake’s Take weekdays from 5-6 p.m. on Fox News Radio KZNU – 96.7 FM 1450 AM – or online streaming live on the brand new KZNU Sports website: www.kznusports.com

[email protected]

Twitter:  @BlakesTake

Twitter Hashtag:   #DSCMBB

Copyright 2012 St. George News.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.