By With five hard-fought wins in seven conference games, Carroll’s men’s basketball team is off to a strong start to their 2022-2023 season.
After splitting two games on a road trip in South Dakota for the Small College Basketball Champions Classic, the team lost to Morningside (IA) 54-72 and beat Dakota Wesleyan (SD) 78-71.
The team split the first two conference games, beating Western 76-65 and losing to Northern, 66-62.
“It was overall a good trip, we learned a lot about ourselves and it helped prepare us for future games,” said Andrew Cook, a sophomore guard from Huntington Beach, California, majoring in psychology. “After our first game against Morningside, the sense of urgency really picked up, and we’ve been buying in more for what the coaches are telling us to do, which already showed results in the Dakota Wesleyan game.”
Cook also grabbed All-Tournament honors, averaging 20.5 points per game while shooting 57% from the field, 50% on 3-pointers, and 100% on free throws, as well as pulling down 5.5 rebounds per game.
The team will resume playing on Friday-Saturday, Dec. 9-10, playing in the Comfort Suites Classic in the PE Center against Oregon schools Bushnell University and Corban University. Both games tip off at 7 p.m.
The Saints will get a short break to focus on final exams week before they travel to Chandler, Arizona, to play four games in the Cactus Classic Dec. 17-20. They will follow that up with a trip to Santa Barbara, California, to play two more games before entirely focusing on Frontier Conference matchups, which start on Jan. 5 at Montana Tech.
“We have a lot of new guys on the team this year but we’ve already gelled really well. We’re excited to see everyone grow more as we keep playing tougher games,”, said Jonny Hillman, a senior guard from Post Falls, Idaho, double majoring in Accounting and Financial Planning. “Our expectations are to be competitive in every game we play this year and the end goal is to come out on top at the end of the conference tournament and carry that into Nationals.”
