Denver 62, Western Kentucky 59: Huge road win lifts Pios to 3-0 in SBC

BREAKING NEWS: Denver can win on the road.

The Pioneers extended their winning streak to five games and improved to 7-9 overall, 3-0 in Sun Belt play — and, perhaps most importantly, 1-0 on the road in Sun Belt play — with a 62-59 win over traditional conference power Western Kentucky on Thursday.

“We looked like a very good basketball team tonight,” said Coach Joe Scott. “To come into Western Kentucky, and beat Western Kentucky at their place, says something about your basketball team.”

It’s just the fourth conference road win in Joe Scott’s entire four-year tenure at DU, and Denver’s fifth road win overall in its last 62 road games. And it comes against the Sun Belt’s glamour program, a school that boasts a 1971 Final Four appearance and was the 14th winningest program in Division I college basketball at the end of last season. Three years ago, WKU provided the NCAA Tournament with one of its principal shining moments with a buzzer-beating overtime 12-over-5 upset of Drake.

Denver had beaten WKU the last two seasons, but both of those games were at DU’s Magness Arena. This is the Pioneers’ first ever victory at historic Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“I’ve been coming here since 1999, and I can’t tell you how good this one feels,” Pioneer radio play-by-play man Mitch Hyder told Coach Scott after the game.

“It feels good,” Coach Scott agreed. “And we’re going to enjoy it for a little bit. … We’ve got a little time to be happy here. But sometime tomorrow, I told [the players], it’s not about being happy anymore, it’s about learning how to reward ourselves. It’s about learning how to reward this effort tonight with a similar effort on Saturday [at Louisiana-Monroe]. And we’ll get to work on that at some point tomorrow, because our guys deserve to be happy tonight.”

Denver led by 15 at halftime, and by as many as 18 points early in the second half, but nearly let the advantage slip away late, thanks in part to poor free-throw shooting down the stretch. WKU could not get closer than two, however, and Denver survived with a huge win in historic Diddle Arena.

Hyder described Denver’s first-half effort as possibly the best half of basketball the Pioneers have played during Scott’s four-year tenure.

“I thought we played really well the whole game,” Coach Joe Scott said. “We didn’t turn the ball over, and that means we were running our offense well.” He added that “tonight, obviously, was the best that [the offense has] been.”

“Everybody that played tonight contributed,” Scott said. Brian Stafford led the way with 17 points, Travis Hallam had 15, Chase Hallam had 11, and the team’s rotating interior players, Andrew Hooper and Chris Udofia, combined for 10 points (8 for Udofia, 2 for Hooper). Tyler Thalken scored 7 points and also had 5 assists against zero turnovers. Overall, the Pioneers shot 51% from the field, including 38% from three-point land. The only real blemish was the 40% free-throw shooting.

“What I told the guys at the end of the game was, ‘whale of a game,'” Scott said. Now, he added, “we’ve gotta learn how to embrace having the lead,” which includes hitting layups, open shots and free throws down the stretch. But even while allowing Western Kentucky back into the game late, he said, “[w]e put ourselves in position [to win], because we didn’t give them any easy shots.”

“Our guys have been fighting hard for this,” Scott said. “They’ve hung in there and hung in there, and scrapped and clawed. I have to say the same for our coaches. It wasn’t easy in late November and early December, but our guys have a lot of character, and the adversity, I think, has done something for us. And now we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. We’ve put ourselves in good position, there’s no question about that.”

As great of a win as it was Denver, it was an equally bad loss for Western Kentucky. The once-proud program is now 5-9 overall, 0-2 in the Sun Belt, and and has lost 4 straight and 8 out of its last 10. The Hilltopper Haven message board was in open revolt last night, and someone started a “Fire Ken McDonald Now” blog in the wake of the defeat. After the game, McDonald acknowledged the mounting pressure as the Hilltoppers continue their slide. Some quotes from after the game:

There’s always pressure. That’s my job. That’s why there aren’t many division one coaching jobs and there aren’t many as good as this one. It’s my job and the staff’s job to get us through this, and we’re going to. Would everybody like it sooner? Absolutely. But we’re going to find something to build on from this. …

It is our job to try to keep the negative part out of our guys’ heads and that is tough. It’s tough in a small town and obviously with a program that is used to winning.

The guys have to put their foot down and we all want that. You saw a team in the second half that kind of put their foot down. But having the toughness to understand that no games are going to be easy games (is key).

I want the guys understanding that this is not good enough and I do want them to come out with a chip on their shoulder. Stop being the hunted and go out and be the aggressor and start hunting. That’s a mental mindset. The mental to the physical game is four to one. We have to get that mental mindset right and that’s the biggest challenge right now.

Just stay with us. We have an incredible fanbase. You’ve got people that will be very supportive no matter what and some will jump off the wagon. That comes with the territory, but put that on me. Don’t give up on the players. As leaders of the program, we’ll get this thing turned around. These guys are working hard, more than you know behind the scenes and eventually it’ll show up in the win column.

We call ourselves a program. The fanbase has to stay with us and stay positive. We all want more, we all demand more. But we’re going to get this thing turned around.