by Parker Fields
This game got going quickly with lots of action in the first few minutes of this one. Trevon Faulkner picked up from where he left off against Oakland with a three to get this one going for the Norse.
From there the leading scorer in the Horizon league Antoine Davis hit a tough step back in the mid-range to get his team going. From there, the Norse continued to stay hot early and took a 9-7 lead into the first media timeout after a Marques Warrick pull-up jumper.
After that jumper, NKU’s problems of the half started to show. NKU started to turn the ball over often which led to points for Detroit. In the first half, NKU scored just one point off turnovers to
Detroit Mercy’s 9.
This was the main difference of the half, NKU continuously struggled against Mercy’s tenacious defense. If you told NKU before the game that Antoine Davis would have just 7 points at the half, they’d think that they were up 10. But due to NKU’s turnovers and struggled to hit open shots they trailed 33-27 at the half. At the half, NKU was led by Trevon Faulkner with 11 points and Bryson Langdon with 8 points. Detroit Mercy was led by Kevin McAdoo with 9 and Antoine Davis and D.J. Harvey with 7 apiece.
The second half was lots more offense than the first. Antoine Davis started to get in a rhythm and hit some shots, NKU’s dynamic wings of Marques Warrick and Trevon Faulkner got hot for the Norse and were scoring early and often. Even without scoring as much as he
normally does, Freshman guard Sam Vinson hit a big three and was a constant presence controlling the tempo of the game. NKU even cleaned up their Turnover problem in the second half and turned it over just four times. In the end, though, this game came down to capitalizing
off Turnovers.
Detroit Mercy did and NKU didn’t. NKU lost the points off turnovers battle by 6 and lost the game by 6. That tells the story right there, the teams played even in every aspect, and points off of turnovers were the difference.
NKU lost the game 74-68 and took a tough loss to end their 6 game winning streak. NKU was led by Trevon Faulkner with 19 points and Detroit Mercy was led by the future Horizon League Player of the Year Antoine Davis with 19 points.
The Norse will be back in action Wednesday, February 9th at 8 p.m. Est. at Milwaukee.
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