Box Score
Overall Statistics
KALAMAZOO, Mich. ? It was a tale of two halves as Western Michigan comes from 14 points down to defeat Eastern Michigan, 60-55, in the first round of the 2006 Mid-American Conference Tournament. Senior Brian Snider led the Broncos in points (21), rebounds (seven), steals (four) and assists (three) in his last game at University Arena.
"When I'm more aggressive I think our team feeds off that," Snider said. "I didn't want this to be my last game. I wanted to make a point that I was going to lead this team aggressively tonight."
"(Brian) showed his competitive greatness tonight," head coach Steve Hawkins said. "At a point in time when things weren't looking great he got steals, he shot the ball well, he ran the offense well and came down with some big rebounds for us. He pretty much did everything tonight."
Western Michigan (14-16, 10-8 MAC) trailed by double digits twice in the first half, going down 14 points to the Eagles (7-21, 3-15 MAC) at the 5:07 mark. WMU shot 33.3 percent from the floor (9-for-27) during the first 20 minutes. It looked as though the 11 seed might oust the sixth seeded Broncos. All that would change after halftime.
"I thought it was a tremendously gutsy performance by our guys," Hawkins said. "I thought we had some great looks early, but couldn't get them to drop. Our defense started to kick in a little bit and our bench came through for us defensively to keep us close going into halftime. We came out pretty quick in the second half and got things knotted up and we had a ball game from there."
WMU came out on fire, erasing the eight-point halftime deficit with a 14-4 run that lasted 8:07. Snider and Joe Rietz paced the comeback, scoring eight and six points respectively during the run. Reitz joined Snider in double figures with 10 points on 5-of-8 shooting. Stanes Bufford's fast break dunk tied the game at 37. It was the first tie since the game began. Reitz's lay up at the 11:53 mark gave the Broncos their first lead of the night, 39-37.
Eastern Michigan tied the score at 39 and 41 but after Stane's Bufford hit a lay up and Andrew Hershberger sank a free throw, the lead was WMU's for good. The Eagles would make it very interesting down the stretch, drawing to within four points on two occasions. Each time the Broncos answered, once with a Snider lay up and another time with a fast break Derek Fracalossi lay up. The Broncos outscored the Eagles 12-0 in fast break points.
The two teams changed fortunes in the second half. EMU shot 33.3 percent from the field (7-for-21) in the second stanza and Western Michigan knocked down 14-of-26 shots to shoot 53.8 percent.
"We were down at halftime, but coach stayed calm and preached defense," Reitz said. "The main thing was that we picked up our defensive intensity in the second half and that was the key to the ball game. We knew if we cranked it up on defense this was our game for the taking."
Bufford added nine points in his final game at University Arena while Hershberger finished with seven points, seven rebounds and three blocks. Freshman Andre Ricks added eight points off the bench for Western Michigan.
John Bowler led the Eagles with 18 points on 6-of-18 shooting and 15 rebounds. He was joined by Carlos Medlock (12, 10 in the first half) and Craig Cashen (11, nine in the first half) in double figures.
Western Michigan now travels to Cleveland for the 2006 MAC Tournament quarterfinals. The Broncos will face third seed Akron at 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 9 in Quicken Loans Arena. Tickets can be purchased on www.wmubroncos.com or by calling 1-888-4-WMU-TIX.
In other first round action, (8) Buffalo outlasted (9) Ball State, 80-72. (5) Ohio defeated (12) Central Michigan, 82-53, and (7) Toledo was victorious over (10) Bowling Green, 77-52.
