Revenge was on the minds of Fort Lewis College on Friday night, and the Skyhawks made it clear pretty quickly which team was superior this time around.
The last time the 20th-ranked FLC men’s basketball team was in Grand Junction, Jan. 15, 2016, they let a late lead slip away en route to the team’s last conference defeat.
Friday night was a different story, as Rasmus Bach’s 27 points and Joshua Blaylock’s 23 led Fort Lewis (8-1, 3-0 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) to an 89-72 win. It is the team’s eighth consecutive victory, and the 18th in a row against RMAC opponents. The 17-point win matched the largest Skyhawks win in Grand Junction in school history.
“We just had a really bad taste in our mouths about the way it went here last year,” Fort Lewis head coach Bob Pietrack said in a phone interview with The Durango Herald. “It really stung, so it was important for us to come back here and put up a strong performance, and the guys came out ready to play.”
Fort Lewis shot 55 percent in the first 20 minutes and silenced the Grand Junction crowd early by putting up a dominant effort in the opening half.
Three Skyhawks were in double-digits in the scoring column by halftime, as FLC had a double-digit lead 10 minutes into the night’s action and led by as much as 21 in the opening half.
Colorado Mesa (1-8, 0-3 RMAC) tried to duplicate the comeback effort the Mavericks’ women’s team staged earlier in the evening. The home team cut the deficit to single digits twice before the Skyhawks had enough.
“We have a lot of respect for that team,” Pietrack said. “It’s a well-coached and proud program at Colorado Mesa, and the kids played hard the whole game. They never let up and they made us work for everything we got.”
The work paid off, though, as FLC took over down the stretch. The Skyhawks went on a mid-second half 11-0 run and eventually pumped the lead to 22 points, which allowed some all-important rest on the first night of another grueling RMAC weekend on the road.
The winning outcome itself wasn’t the only good news for the defending conference champions, as Riley Farris made his return to the court after what was thought to be a season-ending knee injury. The redshirt freshman forward missed only three weeks and returned to the floor a week after being on crutches on the team’s bench.
“Riley played for a couple minutes (Friday), and he’ll get more and more action as time goes on,” Pietrack said. “I was hesitant to give Mesa any breathing room at all, so some bench guys we might normally use didn’t log a lot of minutes. They’ll all be ready (Saturday).”
Fort Lewis will take its 18-game RMAC win streak to Western State for a 7 p.m. Saturday matchup with the Mountaineers.
jfries@durangoherald.com
