Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Pointer men beat zone defense, Platteville
By Jerry Rhoden
Journal staff

When the Pointer machine found the right gear, it pulled ahead and ran with traffic as the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point men's basketball team held off UW-Platteville 64-56 on Tuesday at Quandt Fieldhouse.

The victory ran the Pointers' record to 13-0, their best start since 1935-36. They've won their first four Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contests for the first time since the 1982-83 season.

The Pointers are ranked sixth in the nation among Division III schools and boast the best record among the top 25.

The visiting Pioneers (5-8, 2-3 WIAC) stuck with a matchup zone that gave the Pointers fits early on.

"The zone takes a while to get used to," said Nick Bennett, who scored a team-high 19 points. We ran some backdoors (cuts). You've really got to crash the boards because they don't have blocking assignments."
Bennett shot 7-of-10 from the floor and 3-of-6 from the 3-point arc.

Putting the ball into Bennett's hands, more often than not, was Jason Kalsow. The sophomore forward lent a career-high 11 assists as he moved from his normal post position to survey the Pioneer defense from near the top of the key.

"They're bigger, and we tried to negate that," Platteville coach Todd Landrum said, acknowledging his Pioneers fell short of at least one Kalsow-related goal. "We wanted to keep the ball out of his hands."

"It's harder for me to play my game against a zone," Kalsow said. "But we got stops, and that sparked the crowd a little."

It helped that 6-foot-8 senior center Josh Iserloth, the school's 10th all-time leading scorer, took advantage of Kalsow's generosity for 17 points.

Tyler Selk, Iserloth's opposition inside, led all scorers with 21 points and scored five points to pull Platteville to within 31-29 early in the second half. But each of the five Pointers on the floor at the time scored in an 11-2 run that provided the decisive margin.

"We were a lot more aggressive hunting for our shot in the second half," Pointer coach Jack Bennett said. "In the second half, we were much crisper. We got real good looks under the basket, but then we hit just enough threes to keep them honest."

Platteville outrebounded UW-SP, 24-23, the area of most concern to Jack Bennett.

"We've got to become more consistent in our aggressiveness on rebounds," he said.

The Pointers could meet their match in terms of perimeter speed when they host a guard-oriented UW-La Crosse team at 7 p.m. Saturday.