Late Warriors surge leads to Pride road loss to Midland

Fremont, Neb. - Bouncing right out of the Thanksgiving holiday with a road trip to Nebraska, the Clarke University men's basketball team was unable to hold a late second half lead resulting in an 81-74 loss to Midland University on Friday afternoon.

A game that never either side take a lead larger than seven points, the back-and-forth contest in nature finished with 15 ties and 10 lead changes throughout its entirety as the final seven minutes ended up telling a lot of the story.

Taking their largest lead of the game at 69-64 following a Daquon Lewis three pointer to cap off an 11-4 run, Clarke would only be able to score five of the next 23 points in the game as the Warriors would close out the final 5:38 of the game outscoring CU 17-5 and never coughing up the lead following a Jake Orr go-ahead shot that made it 73-71 with 3:14 remaining.

The final nails in the Clarke coffin came in the form of a three pointer hit by Trey McCain to make it a five-point MU lead with just over 1:30 left in the game then Luke Gdowski would knock down a pair of free throws with the shot clock turned off to pull it ahead to its final of 81-74.

Gdowski led all scorers with 20 points on 8-of-11 (72.7%)  shooting from the field as four other members of the Midland lineup scored in double figures with Cole Peterson adding 15 off the bench, Ryan Larsen scoring 12, Orr producing 11 points, and Jeff Rozelle III finished with a double-double of 10 points and a game-high 13 rebounds.

For the Pride, Jake Layman had his best scoring game of the early portions of the season going 6-of-10 (60%) from the field for 17 points with Carson Lindauer adding 13 points and a team-high seven rebounds then both Lewis and Maximiliano Bowman both adding 11 points in the starting lineup for CU.

Despite being outrebounded and finishing with a lower shooting percentage, Clarke was able to hold their late lead and keep the game close by taking care of the ball with only nine turnovers to Midland's 14 and outscoring the Warriors in points off turnovers (16-7) and second chance points (14-5) by a combined 30-12.

Clarke men's basketball will stay in Nebraska for an exhibition game against Wayne State in Wayne, Neb. tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. CT before returning to Heart of America Athletic Conference play next Tuesday, Dec. 3 when they host Culver-Stockton College for a 7:30 p.m. CT tip against the Wildcats in the Kehl Center.