No. 14 Trailblazers start postseason with Region 24 tournament win over Lake Land

INA, Ill. – The No. 14 ranked Vincennes University Trailblazers earned the No. 2 seed in this year's Region 24/Central District Tournament and began tournament play Monday night with a 79-67 win over Lake Land College.

The Trailblazers broke away earlier in the first half, quickly building a 19-8 lead.

VU would maintain this double-digit lead throughout the rest of the opening half of play, growing as large as 15 before the Lakers scored the final four points of the half to cut the Vincennes lead down to 39-28 at the break.

Vincennes came out of the locker room in the second half looking to pull away but the Lakers had other ideas.

Lake Land used a 14-2 scoring run to cut the VU lead down to just four points midway through the final period.

This would be as close as Lake Land would get however as VU immediately followed up with a 7-0 scoring run of their own and would build their lead to 16 points for their largest lead of the night.

The Lakers would attempt another late comeback but were unable to put together another scoring run as VU closed out the game at the free throw line to pick up the 79-67 win over Lake Land College.

"It just is what it is when it's the first day of the tournament," VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. "There were some good things and some bad. You just try to find who is going to be comfortable and play and who is going to have a little bit of anxiety and can't function. That typically affects you on the offensive end and I felt like we had some of that at times tonight. But we made enough plays that we were able to get it done."

"I thought we had a chance to get a big lead at the half," Franklin added. "We were up 11, which is solid, but I thought we should have been up by about 20 to 25 points and the opportunity was definitely there. Then to start the second half I thought we should have put it away. But I knew when we didn't that they were eventually going to go on a little bit of a run. We got a little tight because everybody is looking around and nobody is doing it and we don't have the guy that has done it before."

The Trailblazers were led offensively by sophomore Caleb Johnson (N. Preston, Nova Scotia) who tied his season-high with 27 points on just 15 shots. Johnson would also grab four rebounds and lead the Blazers with a pair of blocks.

Sophomore Tasos Cook (Columbus, Ohio) helped put the game away late at the free throw line, connecting on all eight of his free throw attempts on his way to 21 points and a team-high nine assists.

Sophomore Shilo Jackson (Indianapolis, Ind.) had another tough assignment on the low block and finished his night with seven points and six rebounds.

Freshman Ryan Oliver (Antioch, Tenn.) came off the bench to add six points and dish out four assists, while freshman Michael Osei-Bonsu (Bolingbrook, Ill.) led the Blazers with eight rebounds.

"We tried to get some isolation situations for Caleb," Franklin said. "He attacked and made a few plays. I thought Devawn gave us some good minutes during that stretch when we pulled it away again. Tasos is fighting out there and he's having to play big minutes. I thought Ryan Oliver gave us some good things during that time."

"The job that Ryan has done defensively against Johnny Close this season is phenomenal," Franklin added. "Our fans might not know this, but Johnny Close has been lighting it up all year and in the three games we've played them, Ryan has locked him down and done a tremendous job of chasing through screens and staying on task. That's a big factor in the game. That's worth about 25 points, probably more. The ability for Ryan to do that. It's like if somebody scored 25 points, we'd say he had a great game, Ryan scored 25 tonight by not letting Johnny Close get any."

"At different times, different guys stepped up," Franklin added. "We don't have anybody back that's done it, so we are learning as we go and hoping that we can survive long enough to learn enough to get comfortable in it. Hopefully we will be a lot more comfortable in here Wednesday night and if we are then we will play better. The truth of the matter is it's about these players getting through that line and figuring it out. Once they've done it and have been through it, most of the time your good players will start to get comfortable in it. I hope that's what happens Wednesday."

Vincennes advances to the Region 24 Semifinals Wednesday, March 8 and will face the winner of No. 3 seed Southwestern Illinois and No. 6 seed Wabash Valley. Tip-off time Wednesday is set for 8 p.m. eastern.

Other scores from the Quarterfinals of the Region 24 tournament include No. 1 seed John A. Logan winning over No. 9 seed Lewis & Clark 86-61 and No. 4 seed Olney Central winning over No. 5 seed Kaskaskia College 72-71.

"We've just got to get through it," Franklin said. "Sometimes you can really get one or two guys to step through that line and it makes it more comfortable for everybody else. We haven't known who that was going to be. Caleb came through pretty big offensively when we needed it and we really needed it when they were getting back closer to us."

"I just told them in the timeout, 'guys, do you really want it'," Franklin added. "I told them to just play Lake Land. Don't play being in the playoffs, just play Lake Land for these last 10 minutes and if we do that, then I think we'll be okay. You never really know if anything is going to work or how anyone will respond. It's kind of up to the players and I'm never going to claim any different and at that point we had some players step up and that was the difference. We pushed them back away and held them off at the end."

"I'm proud of them," Franklin said. "They got through it tonight. Basically led wire-to-wire against a hot ball club who is very talented. But we did the things that you don't always notice, but were tremendous. Locking up Johnny Close like we did, we kept the guards out of the lane most of the night. They were just blowing by Lincoln Trail on Saturday in a dominant performance and we knew we had to stop that. We kept Kuljuhovic off of the glass for the most part. He's a tremendous offensive rebounder. When you stop those things, everybody takes it for granted. Keeping those big guys off of the offensive glass is pretty hard. Keeping Johnny Close from getting those shots off is really hard. We let Hussein get too many, but we were playing him one-on-one and not giving up the offensive glass to the other big guys and not helping off of guys like Close. But there were a lot of things that we did well tonight that are not the most spectacular and that's why we won and we were able to lead pretty much wire-to-wire."

VINCENNES BOX SCORE

VINCENNES (79): Tasos Cook 6-13 8-8 21, Trenton Johnson 2-7 2-3 6, Caleb Johnson 10-15 4-5 27, Michael Osei-Bonsu 2-2 0-0 4, Shilo Jackson 3-7 1-3 7, Devawn White 1-2 0-1 2, Kale Gaither 0-0 0-0 0, Kris King 2-10 0-1 4, Ryan Oliver 2-7 1-3 6, Kent King 0-0 0-0 0, Karyiek Dixon 1-1 0-0 2, Team 29-64 16-24 79.

Lake Land – 28   39 – 67

VU (27-4, 15-4) – 39   40 – 79

Three-point goals: VU 5 (C. Johnson 3, Cook, Oliver). Rebounds: VU 30 (Osei-Bonsu 8). Assists: VU 22 (Cook 9). Steals: VU 6 (Kr. King 3). Blocked Shots: VU 4 (C. Johnson 2). Turnovers: VU 13. Personal Fouls: VU 18. Fouled out: None.