A helping of Mr. Inside. A scoop of Mr. Outside. And just the right amount of spice from the rest of the squad.
The recipe turned out just fine Friday for Fort Lewis College.
The FLC men’s basketball team jumped out to a lead as big as 25 points before toppling UC-Colorado Springs 87-75 on Friday at Whalen Gymnasium in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference opener for both teams.
Nick Tomsick had a monster night on the perimeter, in the lane – heck, pretty much everywhere – for the Skyhawks, scoring 34 points on a stellar 12-of-18 shooting, including 6-of-9 from 3-point range and a perfect 4-of-4 from the foul line to lead all scorers.
“Nick made huge shots,” FLC head coach Bob Hofman said.
FLC center Alex Herrera did his part to fill the stat sheet, scoring 20 points, including 12 from the charity stripe on 15 attempts to go with 12 rebounds and five blocked shots. In a physical game in the post, Herrera’s work on foul shooting this week after a poor showing in three games in Hawaii paid off.
“One thing that I worked on really a lot this week was shooting a lot of free throws, especially after my poor free-throw shooting in Hawaii,” Herrera said.
Even Tomsick, who almost couldn’t miss Friday, said the Skyhawks could have done a better job feeding their big man inside.
“I was pretty comfortable (Friday), but one thing that we really have to work on with Alex is, he got a lot of touches (Friday), but we didn’t get him the ball soon enough, so he was catching the ball out of the scoring area,” Tomsick said.
“He’s 6-9, 6-10 in the post. At this level, it’s really hard to stop.”
FLC (4-1, 1-0 RMAC) jumped out to a big lead early behind the offensive effort of Herrera and Tomsick and a strong defensive effort that helped produce a 32-8 run and a 41-16 lead before the Skyhawks held a 49-30 halftime edge.
UCCS (3-4, 0-1 RMAC) used a barrage of 3s to start the second half to cut the lead to 55-44 just 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the frame.
Derrick White, who had 24 points and 11 rebounds, was the big catalyst for the Mountain Lions, who would get as close as seven points but could get no closer.
“We were really getting stops because we had five energy guys instead of just two or three energy guys,” Hofman said.
FLC got nine points, three assists and a pair of steals from JoeBell Austin, and Mike Matthews provided a spark off the bench with nine points and four rebounds.
rowens@durangoherald.com
