It’s a big week for Fort Lewis College basketball as both the men and women will be competing in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s RMAC Shootout starting Tuesday.
Fort Lewis (24-3, 19-3 RMAC) and CSU-Pueblo men’s basketball teams are about to square off for the third time this season. The Skyhawks won both previous meetings, but Tuesday is a fresh start for those who qualified for postseason play, and the 24-3 Skyhawks are back to square one.
The FLC women are headed to Golden to take on the top-seeded Colorado Mines Orediggers.
“This is it, we’re all zero and zero,” Fort Lewis head coach Bob Pietrack said in a phone interview with The Durango Herald. “I think we might have drawn the best No. 8 seed in the history of the conference having to go up against Pueblo.”
The Skyhawks and ThunderWolves (16-12, 12-10 RMAC) will play each other for the third consecutive year in the opening round of the RMAC Shootout at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Durango. Fort Lewis lost a 72-63 game in Pueblo to get bounced out of last year’s tournament after beating the ThunderWolves in the previous year’s opening round.
Though the Skyhawks beat CSU-Pueblo by double digits in both of this year’s meetings, the ThunderWolves have put together some impressive wins. Early in the season, they racked up road wins against No. 1 ranked Tarleton St. and No. 11 Midwestern State. The ThunderWolves also went to Golden and beat the tournament’s No. 2 seed, Colorado Mines, by 10.
“They have a heck of an offense and a veteran coach,” Pietrack said. “After a 30-game season, I’m not sure if there’s anything different we can throw at them and vice versa, but we’re going to have our hands full again because they have a lot of talent on that team.”
FLC and CSU-Pueblo are the only teams in the conference to average at least 11 3-pointers a game, so a shootout is imminent. The ThunderWolves have the league’s second best offense at 82.2 points per game and guard Chris Golden makes the wheel turn. Golden is eighth in the RMAC averaging 16.8 points per game and scored 18 points to lead his team in a Feb. 13 loss at Whalen Gymnasium.
The RMAC’s top offense, Fort Lewis, exploded for 56 first-half points that night and coasted to a 99-85 win.
FLC is led by point guard Joshua Blaylock, who averages 17.2 points a game. Blaylock led the Skyhawks in scoring in 13 of the team’s 27 games and has the ability to take over the game on his own. That hasn’t happened often, however, as Fort Lewis has an arsenal of weapons at its disposal. The RMAC regular season champions have four players averaging in double figures with Rasmus Bach (14.1), Cade Kloster (12.7) and Will Morse (12.2) joining Blaylock in supplying the firepower for the juggernaut FLC offense.
The similarities end on defense, however, as CSU-Pueblo allows 10 more points per game (81.6) than Fort Lewis (71.3).
If Fort Lewis wins Tuesday’s opening round matchup, they’ll host the RMAC Shootout’s Final Four at Whalen Gymnasium Friday and Saturday.
On the women’s side, Fort Lewis has won nine of 12 heading into the postseason and the Skyhawks are seeking revenge after dropping a pair of heartbreaking losses to the Orediggers this season. Colorado Mines won both meetings by a combined three points as each game could have gone either way.
The last time the two teams met was a Jan. 9 game in Golden in which the Skyhawks blew a four-point lead in the final minute to lose 65-63. In the earlier meeting at Fort Lewis, a questionable call allowed the Orediggers to win the game 57-56 with a late free throw.
If the Skyhawks hope to pull off the upset, they’ll need to lean on leading scorers Dallas Dickerson and Astrea Reed. Dickerson leads a very deep Skyhawks bench with 12.4 points per game while Reed has been a rock on the offensive end scoring in double figures nearly every night.
The women are scheduled to tip at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Golden while the men will host the ThunderWolves at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Fort Lewis College’s Whalen Gymnasium.
jfries@durangoherald.com
