Sparked by senior Oscar Garcia, the Fort Lewis College men’s basketball team played its best half of the season when it mattered most.
Garcia scored a career-high 16 points, including 10 in the second half, as the FLC Skyhawks outscored CSU-Pueblo 50-29 after intermission to secure a 79-68 win in the quarterfinal round of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Shootout.
“I just didn’t want to lose this game, especially for Wes (McKenzie), Nick (Tomsick) and Mike (Matthews),” said Garcia, who referenced the three other seniors who played their last career home game Tuesday at Whalen Gymnasium. “I just wanted to play my butt off for them.”
FLC (18-9) trailed 39-29 at halftime against the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves (15-12). Both teams struggled to score in the opening minutes of the second half, but solid rebounding led to Skyhawk points as the team mounted a comeback.
Garcia gave the team a 51-50 lead with 8 minutes, 30 seconds remaining when he hit a pair of free throws.
FLC head coach Bob Hofman was set to check junior center Alex Herrera into the game for Garcia, then told Herrera to check in for Cade Kloster instead, after Garcia made his second of the two free throws. Garcia rewarded his head coach, coming up with rebounds, key hustle plays, a layup and two more free throws that helped FLC build a 57-50 lead with seven minutes left in the game.
“I think coach was sensing what everyone in the building was sensing, that Oscar was playing really good, and you can’t take him out right then,” FLC associate head coach Bob Pietrack said.
Herrera and Tomsick helped close out the game with key points from the free throw line and key rebounds. Herrera finished with a double-double with 16 points and 12 rebounds. He also recorded two more blocked shots while helping the team win the rebounding battle 46-30.
“The further we want to go right now, the rebounding battle is key,” Herrera said. “All these top teams are good rebounding teams, and we showed we can do it (Tuesday).”
Tomsick finished with a team-high 24 points on 6-of-14 shooting and 10-of-12 shooting from the free throw line. Tomsick played a strong defensive game despite the tough task of going one-on-one with CSU-Pueblo senior guard Nate Tigner.
Tigner scored a game-high 26 points, but 12 of those came in the final two minutes as the ThunderWolves tried to hang close in a 10-point game.
“It was a good matchup. He is a really good player and made a lot of big shots down the stretch,” Tomsick said.
FLC shot 44.6 percent in the game and 6-of-17 from behind the 3-point line. The ThunderWolves shot just 35.4 percent, which was brought down by a 25.7-percent shooting performance in the second half.
“That second half might have been our best half of the year,” Pietrack said. “We talked about it at halftime. We were playing frustrated because we wanted to be good so bad. We had been playing really good in the first half the last three games and hadn’t been playing very good in the second half. We flipped the script.”
The second-half performance by the Skyhawks drew praise from their head coach, especially considering the team’s two previous losses to CSU-Pueblo in the regular season.
“I couldn’t be prouder of our senior class. That is what Fort Lewis basketball is all about, and it has been since we came here,” Hofman said.
The win sends FLC to the RMAC Shootout final four for the 11th time in 13 years. The Skyhawks will face top-ranked Metro State (26-1) on Friday in the semis.
“Two weeks ago, we played up there and got whipped pretty good. It was a gut-check for all of us,” Pietrack said. “We have won four in a row to get back to that game. We know how good they are; we saw it first hand. We are excited for the challenge of playing the nation’s best team.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
