HAMMOND, Ind. – Sangolay Njie (Chicago, Ill./Whitney Young) turned in a career-best 22-point performance to lead Purdue Northwest to its first Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win of the season in a 91-82 victory over Saginaw Valley State on Thursday at
John Friend Court.
HEAD COACH BOOMER ROBERTS:
"I'm happy for the fellas, because they've kept working, kept believing in each other. When Kell went down, it was just another bad hand of adversity we were dealt, and that's nothing new for this group.
AB was steady, and some young guys really stepped up today. Sangolay was great, and Z, Logan, and Ant all made big plays on both ends. I thought our bigs fought well, and we got some big stops down the stretch."
How it happened: The Pride (4-13, 1-8 GLIAC) snapped a nine-game losing streak thanks to blistering shooting from beyond the arc all night. PNW was 13 for 25 (52%) from long range with Njie,
Caleb Zurliene (Breese, Ill./Mater Dei) and
Anthony Barnard (Kokomo, Ind./Kokomo) each going 3 for 4.
PNW never trailed in the first half, and led by as many as nine points in the opening stanza, before the teams took a 35-35 tie into the locker room at halftime.
SVSU (10-6, 4-4 GLIAC) took a brief 37-35 lead to open the second half, but Zurliene's trey at the 19:26 mark of the second period gave the Pride a lead they would not relinquish the rest of the night. The Pride trailed for a total of 14 seconds the entire game.
PNW strung together numerous leads of eight and nine points throughout the second half, but the Cardinals kept clawing their way back before the Pride finished the game out at the free throw line. The Black & Gold drained 24 for 31 (77.4%) for the game including 12 of its final 13 free throw attempts.
Coach Roberts' squad put together one of the most complete team peroformances of the season, with a fantastic effort across the lineup including Njie, Zurliene, Barnard and
Anthony Irvin (Chandler, Ariz./Corona Del Sol), who all tallied double-digit scoring performances. Njie added a team-high seven rebounds to his 22-point performance. Zurliene poured in 18 points, hauled in six rebounds, dished out three assists and blocked three shots to fill the stat sheet. Irvin had a 15-point, four-rebound and two-teal performance to go along with Barnard's 14 points, five rebounds, three assists and one blocked shot.
PNW's bench also outscored SVSU's reserves by a 20-9 mark.
Darnell Hoskins, Jr. led the way for SVSU with a game-high 26 points.
UP NEXT
The Pride return to John
. Friend Court on Saturday with an afternoon GLIAC contest against Wayne State. Tipoff is slated for 3 p.m. CST.
FOLLOW THE PRIDE
For all the latest information on Purdue Northwest Men's Basketball, please visit PNWathletics.com. For up-to-the-minute updates, follow the Pride (@pnwathletics & @PNWBasketball) on Twitter. You can also find the Pride on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
