The Carleton Ravens basketball team started their exhibition season with a 63-59 loss to the Murray State Racers (MSU).
Two years ago, Carleton defeated the nationally-ranked Wisconsin Badgers and took powerhouse Syracuse to overtime. This year, the Ravens began their summer exhibition schedule with a loss against an anonymous opponent from the lesser-known Ohio Valley Conference.
Despite being less well-known, the Murray State Racers did come to play on Monday night.
With a rookie head coach at its helm in Matt McMahon and four starters gone from last season, the Racers basketball program’s 2015-16 season is an uncertain one. But after an embarrassing 81-57 loss at the hands of the Ottawa Gee-Gees to start its Canadian tour on Sunday, MSU came out battling against Carleton on Monday.
“The biggest thing for us was our defensive energy,” McMahon said, whose team shot 55 per cent from the floor in the second half and came up with big defensive stops at key points in the game.
“For the first sixty minutes of our [Canadian] tour, we shot the ball incredibly poorly. Finally, shots started going in and we were able to stretch the lead out in the fourth quarter before hanging on,” McMahon said.
The first half was punctuated by errors from the Ravens, who committed fouls in the offensive half and went just 9-of-30 from the floor. The story was much the same for their American counterparts, who shot 10-of-27 in the first half, and the Ravens went into halftime up 24-23.
The third quarter saw Murray State take over the game with a 16-4 run in which the Racers managed to spread Carleton’s defence and penetrate. This was thanks to the dynamic duo of Wayne Langston and A.J. Patty, who dominated the Ravens on the inside. The run was capped by an emphatic two-handed slam from Patty, who joined MSU this summer from a junior college.
Despite a 22-point effort from versatile guard Connor Wood, Carleton could not bridge the gap opened up by MSU’s third quarter run, and the Ravens were ultimately made to pay for missed open looks throughout the night.
“I think we caused them some problems,” said Murray State senior Jeffery Moss, who led the Racers with a team-high 18 points. “We saw they were shooting a lot of three’s, and we tightened up, boxed out, and executed when it mattered with big-time plays.”
New head coach Rob Smart’s Ravens team will now have ten days off before facing the Valparaiso Crusaders on August 13.
