Huskies outscore Lakers 44-19 in the second half
HOUGHTON, Mich. – Senior guard Pete Calcaterra scored a career-high 24 points as the Michigan Tech men’s basketball team completed the GLIAC weekend sweep, downing first-year GLIAC affiliate, Roosevelt, 82-59 at the SDC Gymnasium on Saturday.
Michigan Tech remains a perfect, 5-0 at home and elevates to 10-4 overall and 5-1 in the GLIAC as the Lakers drop to 4-9 overall and 1-4 in the loop.
“To turn around and refocus in a day and a half is hard—the nice thing is we were at home and shot the ball better from three. We still need to figure out what’s going on with our free throws because we have good shooters and they’ll have to figure that out,” Tech head coach Josh Buettner said. “Thursday and tonight Pete was really good and I’m happy for him. I get on him a lot as a fifth-year senior and I’m hard on him but I’m really happy with how he played this week and that helps us with how many other players we have that can score.”
Both teams shot over 50 percent from the field in the opening stanza, with the Lakers holding a 19-12 edge through the first seven minutes of action. Calcaterra gave the Black & Gold its first lead since the opening moments with 7:54 to play off a putback layup to make it 25-24 in favor of the Huskies.
Calcaterra got up to 12 points with under a minute to play, cashing in on an old-fashioned three-point play before Roosevelt’s Enari Thomas hit a jump shot to give the opposition a 40-38 advantage heading into the halftime break.
The Lakers couldn’t keep pace with the Black & Gold in the second half, as Michigan Tech continued the hot-shooting in the 20 minutes, connecting on eight 3-pointers while going 14-for-22 from the field (63.6 percent) despite continuing to struggle from the foul line (8-for-16).
Junior guard Nate Abel got a steal in the opening minute, with Calcaterra scoring in transition to tie the game at 40-all before stringing together a 7-0 run with two free throws and a layup scored by Calcaterra and a triple by Abel capping the frenzy.
Roosevelt hung around until a slam dunk by redshirt freshman Gabe Smith and a 3-pointer two minutes later by senior guard Adam Hobson made it an eight-point affair (55-47) with 9:54 to go.
The Huskies defense was too much for the Lakers, who went scoreless until the 5:21 mark, while the offense for the home team continued to flow, seeing the lead swell to 21 points before a free-throw by Khalil Haywood stopped the scoring woes.
With 2:55 to play, Michigan Tech saw its lead grow to 25 points off a triple by Hobson before the Huskies saw playing time from its reserves, cruising to an 82-59 finish.
“We haven’t been playing the best on Saturday’s, so we wanted to bounce back from last Saturday and being able to respond in the second half was big for the team and obviously when I can score and help the team win it’s always a good day,” Calcaterra added.
Behind Calcaterra’s career day, freshman guard Ty Fernholz continued to impress with 16 points, including four-for-six from beyond the arc to round out the double-digit scorers. Smith recorded a career-high 12 boards to lead the Huskies. Calcaterra and Smith also recorded a team-leading three assists, respectively.
Thomas had a team-leading 23 points for Roosevelt, while Forte Prater added 10. Haywood had a team-leading eight rebounds to go with seven points.
Up Next
The Huskies remain at SDC Gymnasium next week, hosting Saginaw Valley State on Thursday (7:30 p.m.) and Wayne State on Saturday (2 p.m.).
