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News you can use
Montana State University-Northern's Kavon Bey shoots during a Frontier Conference men's game against Carroll College last week in Havre. The Lights face another Top 25 team at Lewis-Clark State tonight and also travel to a much-improved Montana Tech Saturday night.
There's no doubt, the Montana State University-Northern men's basketball team is hungry for a win. Especially after some bitter losses last week in Frontier Conference play. To get those wins back, however, the Lights will have to do it on the road.
Tonight, Northern (1-3, 11-5) meets No. 12 Lewis-Clark State (3-1, 15-1) in Lewiston, Idaho, before MSU-N travels to Butte Saturday to face upstart Montana Tech (2-2, 10-5). And, while both opponents will be daunting for the Lights, Northern head coach Shawn Huse also wants to just see his team play better.
"We know we're better (than the way we played in Great Falls)," Huse said. "We know we can perform at much higher level, and so we just need to keep working."
The Lights, led by double-digit scorers Kavon Bey, Mascio McCadney and Adam Huse, as well as one of the top scoring defense in the country, feel like, if they start to shoot the ball better, they'll have no trouble snapping out of a three-game Frontier losing skid. However, snapping out of that tonight will by no means be easy considering the Warriors were a Final 4 team a year ago, return star point guard Damek Mitchell, and have about as much firepower offensively as anyone in the NAIA, let alone the Frontier.
In fact, both teams the Lights face are high-scoring offensive squads. Tech, which beat the University of Montana Grizzlies back in the fall, has Sindaou Diallo, who averages 21 points per game, as well as forward Taylor England, who averages 15 points and nine rebounds per outing. And, while Northern's defense has been very good this season, both the Warriors and Orediggers are topping the 90-point plateau on average this season.
"Both teams play hard on D and present plenty of challenges on O ... around the rim and behind the arc," coach Huse said. "We need to be prepped and ready if we want to slow them down on defense and take advantage of our opportunities on offense."
Again though, as daunting as both road challenges will be this weekend, Huse is also concerned about it his team just focusing on it what it does, and getting back to playing the kind of basketball that had the Lights ranked in the Top 15 just last month.
"Our biggest focus right now is playing to our potential and knocking down shots," Huse said. "At some point, our inexplicable offensive consistency struggles have to come to an end. We just need to keep grinding and have confidence the ball will start going in for us the way we are used to."
The Lights and Warriors meet tonight at 8:30 in Lewiston, Idaho. MSU-N battles Tech Saturday at 7:30 in Butte.
NAIA Coaches Poll
1 1 Georgetown (Ky.) [9] 15-0 219
2 3 Mid-America Christian 15-0 212
3 5 William Penn (Iowa) 14-1 204
4 11 Westmont (Calif.) 17-1 199
5 6 LSU Shreveport (La.) 15-2 189
6 19 Dalton State (Ga.) 15-1 185
7 2 The Master's (Calif.) 14-3 168
8 7 Providence (Mont.) 15-1 167
9 23 Carroll (Mont.) 13-3 166
10 10 John Brown (Ark.) 13-2 158
11 12 LSU Alexandria (La.) 14-4 142
12 13 Lewis-Clark State 15-1 141
13 RV Faulkner (Ala.) 14-3 133
14 4 Pikeville (Ky.) 15-3 132
15 14 Xavier (La.) 13-4 122
16 RV Cumberlands (Ky.) 13-4 110
17 8 Loyola (La.) 13-4 102
18 15 Hope International 14-3 94
19 22 Texas Wesleyan 12-3 91
20 24 Talladega (Ala.) 14-3 88
21 18 Central Baptist (Ark.) 11-3 84
22 RV SAGU (Texas) 12-2 69
23 21 Arizona Christian 13-4 65
24 NR William Carey (Miss.) 13-5 59
25 NR Shawnee State (Ohio) 14-5 55
Others Receiving Votes: Tougaloo (Miss.) 52, Clarke (Iowa) 22, Stillman (Ala.) 19, Park (Mo.) 15, Dillard (La.) 13, Lindsey Wilson (Ky.) 11, MidAmerica Nazarene (Kan.) 7, Freed-Hardeman (Tenn.) 4, Wayland Baptist (Texas) 3.
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