TACOMA – Pacific Lutheran scored nine of the first 11 points, but Puget Sound claimed the lead midway through the first period and never looked back as the Loggers earned a 65-54 Northwest Conference men's basketball rivalry win over the Lutes Tuesday night at Memorial Fieldhouse.
The loss drops Pacific Lutheran to 5-12 overall and 3-5 midway through the conference season, while Puget Sound improves to 9-7 overall and 4-4 in the NWC. PLU heads down to Forest Grove, Ore., this weekend to open the second half of NWC play against Pacific, with tipoff set for 6 p.m. Saturday.
Brandon Lester continued his hot shooting from three-point territory, going 4-of-9 from long-range to lead the Lutes with 16 points. Dylan Foreman added nine points for PLU and Bryce Miller tallied a team-best four assists. Nick Holden posted a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds for Puget Sound. Erin Barber scored 15 points, while Kohl Meyer tallied 12 and Keith Shattuck added 11.
Lester opened the night with a layup, and after a pair of Holden free throws tied it at 2-2 the Lutes scored seven straight points to take a 9-2 lead. Holden and Lester exchanged three-pointers to make it 12-5, but it was mostly UPS from that point as the Loggers scored the next six points and finished the opening period on 25-8 run to take a 30-20 advantage into the locker room.
Puget Sound scored the first four points of the second half and pushed its lead to as many as 18 points on three different occasions, with the final time coming with only 2:26 remaining in the game. A Shane Jacob layup sparked a late PLU run that featured three-pointers by Kevin McCrossin, Foreman and Lester to pull the Lutes within 10, but by then only 17 seconds remained in the game and a Meyer free throw closed out the 11-point win for the Loggers.
The Loggers shot 43.5 percent overall (20-of-46), while PLU had its third consecutive game below 35 percent at 17-of-49 (34.7 percent). The Lutes did connect on eight of their 18 attempts from beyond the arc (44.4 percent), but the Loggers out-rebounded PLU 38-to-25 and finished the night with eight more free throw makes on 10 more attempts than the Lutes.
