With the Senior Night events and the Norse coming off a tough loss to Wright St. John Brannen and his team were ready to take the court and get back to their winning ways.
The Norse honored seniors Lavone Holland, Jordan Garnett and Nick Ayers tonight for their last home game at BB&T Arena and even had Ayers get his first start in his NCAA career. Although Ayers got the start he saw just 3 minutes of play and didn't record a stat on the stat line. Lavone Holland struggled a bit during the game scoring just 7 points on 2/5 shooting and having six turnovers where Jordan Garnett hit a few big baskets down the stretch to give the Norse some separation in a defensive battle.
The game was pretty close for the most part until the Norse really started to break it open halfway through the second half with Drew McDonald putting up one of his usual double-double stat lines. McDonald scored 27 points including his first four baskets being three pointers and recorded 12 rebounds in a hard fought battle. That is Drew's 15th double-double of the season and his 13th in the last 18 games.
The Norse were excellent on the defensive side of the ball where they held Youngstown St to 20/60 shooting and 5/27 from three point range. Youngstown St Senior Cameron Morse, the defending Horizon League player of the week struggled against NKU scoring 11 points on 5/17 from the field and 1/9 from three point range.
Motor City Madness is right around the corner and Northern Kentucky University is currently tied with Wright St. for first in the Horizon League but loses the tie breaker to the Raiders after a regular season sweep. NKU has two remaining regular season games coming up against the red hot UIC Flames who are third place in the conference and have won 12 of their last 15 games and then the Norse wrap up the regular season against IUPUI. The Norse now stand at 20-8 and 13-3 in Horizon League games
