No. 11 Trailblazers outlast late comeback by D-II No.5 Henry to extend winning streak

VINCENNES, Ind. – The Vincennes University Trailblazer men's basketball team jumped up 12 spots in the latest NJCAA Division I polls this week and were able to defend their new ranking Wednesday night at the P.E. Complex after defeating NJCAA Division II No. 5 Henry Ford College 83-80, for VU's seventh straight victory to begin the season.

The Trailblazers got off to a slow start Wednesday night and trailed early before using an 8-0 scoring run to jump ahead 12-8.

VU would grow their lead to nine before Henry Ford rallied back to take the lead back with a 12-0 scoring run.

The Blazers would answer late in the first half and close out the opening 20 minutes of play on a 9-0 scoring run to take a 41-38 lead into the locker room.

Vincennes quickly expanded their lead early in the second half back to nine before the visiting Hawks cut the deficit back to three.

VU used a 12-0 scoring run to take their biggest lead of the night at 72-55 with 5:39 left to play.

Henry Ford then shifted into another gear, slowly chipping away at the deficit until the Hawks followed a three-point make with a steal and a layup on the inbounds pass to cut the VU lead down to three with under a minute to play.

Vincennes would manage to hold on late at the free throw line as the Trailblazers picked up their seventh straight win to start the season with an 83-80 win over Henry Ford.

"Henry Ford was a good team and they played us tough," VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. "We were able to win by three tonight because we were up 17 and then we quit playing. We had the game won. All we had to do was be tough-minded enough to get it finished, but we weren't that type of tough-minded all night and yet we still found a way to be up by 17. But I never felt like we were locked-in like we have been."

"Then we just let Henry Ford be the total aggressor down the stretch," Franklin added. "We let them get the ball to the middle of the lane and get to the glass. We were soft to the ball. We shot a terrible shot with two minutes to go when we were up 10. Missed a layup off the bottom of the rim, which we did repeatedly tonight. It was just a lot of soft. Then when the game got turned, we weren't tough enough to grit our teeth and stop it."

"Some of it is just stopping the ball," Franklin said. "Then you have to get on the glass. They missed enough shots, but we just didn't clean it off the glass. I don't think we cut very hard for the ball. I didn't think it was that hard to get the ball in and make the plays, we kind of played into it."

"That's on me," Franklin added. "Because I knew the intensity level that we needed. I tried to coach it during the game, unfortunately, because I'm coaching intensity instead of strategy and that has got to change. That can't happen again. But if it does happen again, we'll probably take a loss. We don't have easy games. Every game is a real game. We don't have the ability to say, 'well we'll just be that tonight and we won't know it because the other team can't play with us'."

"If you want to be special then it can't be what it was tonight, you have to be stronger than that," Franklin said. "If you are not, then you are not going to be special. If you are playing at Vincennes and you are trying to do what we are trying to do, then we have to put that on display. If somebody beats us that way, that's fine. If you lose a game going to war, focused and intense, you still don't like it, but you can live with it. Tonight, for the first time for a complete game, we were not the tougher team. I thought in the second half there was a stretch where they looked ready to go and in that stretch, we kept getting the lead, but we weren't really locked in. Had we been, we could have put them all the way out. But we weren't."

"No disrespect to Henry Ford, they have got a really good team, they are going to have a lot of success at their level. They have played very well in our district and they play very well against a lot of Division I teams," Franklin added. "But there is no reason that tonight we didn't win this game by 15 plus. There is no reason other than we weren't tough-minded enough, focused enough or intense enough and physical enough. That's not our basketball family. You don't get to do that here and we did. So now we've done it once. We did it for 25 minutes against Macomb. Now we have to break that habit, that can't happen anymore. I'm going to try and address that in the next couple of days. I'm going to try to coach that up better so I don't have to coach it Saturday night during the game. We are going to coach it tomorrow and Friday and then we will play the people who show me that they want to make sure they don't display that again. I don't think that is too much to ask. It's a good win tonight, because Henry Ford is a good team. But it wasn't a good performance."

The Blazers were led offensively by sophomore Caleb Johnson (N. Preston, Nova Scotia) who picked up 14 of his team-leading 19 points in the second half, while also adding five rebounds and a pair of steals.

Freshman Kale Gaither (Madisonville, Ky.) got the VU offense going early with a trio of first half three's on his way to 15 points, four assists and three rebounds.

Sophomore Shilo Jackson (Indianapolis, Ind.) and freshman Kris King (Washington, D.C.) each finished with double-doubles, with King's coming off the bench.

Jackson ended the night with 13 points and 10 rebounds, while King finished with 10 points, a team-high 11 rebounds and a pair of assists.

Freshman Michael Osei-Bonsu (Bolingbrook, Ill.) nearly completed a double-double as well but battled foul trouble late to finish with 12 points and nine rebounds.

"I thought the one guy that you could probably say had a good game tonight was Caleb," Franklin said. "He didn't have a good start, which is why he sat on the bench for a long time in the first half. I thought he defended pretty well in the second half on the shooter and took him out. But he has got to get on the defensive glass. I didn't think at the end of the game he was aggressive enough and I've said that to him a number of times. He is going to have to get more physical at rebounds. But other than that, I thought in the second half he was pretty good. He was one of the reasons we got up by 17. He got better. I would say he is the guy over the entire game who had a good game. A winning performance, with things that he has got to do better."

"Everybody else, I think it was spotty," Franklin added. "I thought Michael was okay. But then he gets in foul trouble and doesn't finish some things. You can't play him late because you are afraid of the free throw situation, even though we probably should have played him because he would have cleaned the glass."

"It was an up and down performance across the board," Franklin said. "There would be moments when we would do things, but nobody could sustain it. Because the intensity, the focus and the tenacity that are needed to play against this team tonight wasn't there. This game we needed to be able to stop the ball in the middle and you needed to be able to handle yourself in the post and make it tough. When we did that, they struggled. But you had to do that because of the shooters they had on the floor and they were going to make shots. But we just couldn't sustain it."

"Same thing offensively," Franklin added. "When we moved the ball crisply and sharply, we could get what we wanted. But when we would get into some other mode, it wouldn't work. Everybody had moments tonight of positive, but we just didn't sustain it. Hopefully that's a one-night blip and hopefully we don't like how that feels. Hopefully we will make sure in the next couple of days to be prepared and not let it happen Saturday night or in Region play next week."

The Trailblazers will face another D-II Top-25 test again this weekend when VU hosts D-II No. 16-ranked Danville Area Community College at the P.E. Complex Saturday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. eastern on homecoming.

This will be the last test for Vincennes before starting Region 24 play on the road at Kaskaskia Tuesday, Nov. 22 at 8 p.m. in Centralia.

"I think number one we have to get down, move our feet and stop the ball," Franklin said. "I think inside we have to get down and work, make them catch the ball off the spot and not let them get the ball in that line of scoring. Then the next thing is that we have to fire back and box out and clean up the defensive glass. I think those are the top things that we have to go back and get to work on because we didn't do those things tonight and that's why Henry Ford was able to have success."

"Offensively, we just have to get crisp and sharp," Franklin added. "Because when we are sharp and crisp, we don't have a problem. I think some guys also have to decide whether or not they are going to make shots. We were out here tonight getting 'horse' shots and shooting eight for 24. We had at least a dozen layups that we stuck underneath the rim and didn't get up to the basket and it's probably going to be more than that when I go back and watch the film."

"We've got to find some guys that have some toughness when it comes to finishing," Franklin said. "I thought there were some toughness issues tonight that we have to address. If that means you have to be in the gym longer and harder to where you have some real confidence in those things, okay. But eight for 24 from the three-point line tonight wasn't good enough. We did that over the weekend as well. We didn't shoot the ball into the basket very well."

"15 for 26 at the foul line is not good enough," Franklin added. "You can't walk up to the foul line and shoot scared. You have to get in the gym and work until you own that free throw. They are all forms of toughness, it's not just who is physical and those things have got get sharper. We've been winning and I've been all positive about what we've been doing for six games and there has been good and bad in that, but in general it has been positive. But tonight, in my mind, was not a positive night."

"Tonight was negative," Franklin said. "Even if we had finished it off when we were up by 17, I wouldn't have left here feeling very good. Because I never thought we were locked in the way we need to be. Everybody would have looked at me and said I was being too hard on them, but if we had won this game by 20, I still would feel the same way. The end of the game was just a continuation of what I thought was hanging there all night."

"We'll see if we can find that real gear," Franklin added. "If you are aspiring to be a championship team, those aspirations take a different kind of person and a different kind of mindset. That's why they are special. Sometimes people say I'm being too hard, no I'm not. I'm being what you have to be if you want to be in Elite Eights and Final Fours and National Championships. If you want to be a guy who Division I teams want when you leave here, it's not talk. Not everybody can do it and we are going to find out if we can do all of those hard things. They are not things that we couldn't do, they are all things that we are capable of doing. So that's where my disappointment is. I will never be disappointed if we don't do things that I know we can't. But I will be very disappointed if we are not tough enough, hard-edged enough to go do the things that we are capable of because we didn't have that focus or intensity."

"Our aspirations are higher than that, or at least mine are," Franklin said. "If theirs are, which they say they are, then we will be pretty intense the next couple of days and we will be pretty intense Saturday night."

VINCENNES BOX SCORE

VINCENNES (83): Caleb Johnson 7-12 4-4 19, Michael Osei-Bonsu 5-9 2-6 12, Shilo Jackson 4-4 5-7 13, Tasos Cook 2-9 0-1 4, Kale Gaither 5-14 2-2 15, James Locke IV 0-2 0-0 0, Kris King 4-9 0-2 10, Ryan Oliver 1-7 0-2 3, Kent King 2-4 2-2 7, Victor Lado 0-0 0-0 0, Team 30-70 15-26 83.

Henry Ford – 38   42 – 80

VU (7-0) – 41   42 – 83

Three-point goals: VU 8 (Gaither 3, Kr. King 2, C. Johnson, Oliver, Ke. King). Rebounds: VU 47 (Kr. King 11). Assists: VU 18 (Oliver 5). Steals: VU 6 (C. Johnson 2, Gaither 2). Blocked Shots: VU 7 (Osei-Bonsu 2, Gaither 2). Turnovers: VU 13. Personal Fouls: VU 16. Fouled out: None.