The UW-Eau Claire men’s basketball team lost to the UW-Whitewater Warhawks 68-59 on Saturday.

It was a one-point game with less than five minutes to play. However, the Blugolds couldn’t hold on and were outscored 12-4 in the final four minutes of the game.

Junior forward Dustin Kalien said it was tough for the team’s offense to come up short at the end of the game.

“When you have a little bit of a drought there offensively and you can’t get over that final hurdle, we all took it pretty hard,” Kalien said.

Junior guard Nick Bartlett said the team had a very specific game plan for Whitewater: They wanted to stop Warhawk senior center Chris Davis.

“He’s a very physical player and we wanted to make sure that we kept him in check as much as we could,” Bartlett said.  “We wanted to protect the paint.”

Junior guard Jordan Petersen also said the team’s goal was to try to stop Davis.

“(We tried to) just kind of contain him, and help off anytime we could,” Petersen said. “We also wanted to stop their
fast break.”

Kalien said the team’s game plan for the game was to have an attacking mentality.

“We knew that if we played like that on both sides of the ball, both defensively and offensively, we could win the game,” Kalien said.

Bartlett chipped in 12 points, while junior guard Jordan Petersen led Eau Claire in scoring with 20 points. Bartlett said that any player on the team is capable of scoring, as long as they take advantage of the opportunities that are given to them.

“Jordan had a lot of free throws just from taking the ball hard to the hole,” Bartlett said.  Petersen was 9 for 14 from the free-throw line.

Petersen said he was taking the ball to the basket because that’s what the defense was giving him.

“I was able to knock a lot of the free throws down, but missed some key free throws at the end,” he said.

Bartlett said it has been an adjustment for the players in head coach Kyle Green’s first season, but he has noticed similarities between Green and former head coach Terry Gibbons.

“The energy level is a similar thing for me,” Bartlett said.  “We’ve enjoyed playing for both coaches.”

Petersen said Green has brought a lot of energy to the team.

“Practices are pretty up tempo,” he said.

Bartlett stressed consistency when he talked about the team’s outlook for the rest of the year.

“We really want to put together two halves of good basketball; 40 minutes of good basketball every game,” Bartlett said.

Petersen said the team still has some work to do.

“There’s definitely a lot of things we need to work on like rebounding and just our offensive flow,” he said.  “But if we can get that together, then it’s definitely a good outlook.”