Box Score Matt Garnett can hardly wait to take the floor early Saturday afternoon for a rematch of Friday night's home-opener against Barclay College. Not because the
Wayland Baptist coach thinks his team can rack up another victory, but because he wants to see how much the Pioneers can improve after posting a 100-71 win over the Bears.
"I'm excited to see our guys compete (Saturday). Game to game, you try to get better at things, especially this time of year when you're not doing well, and we're going to have an opportunity to be better at a lot of different things," Garnett said. "I'm looking forward to seeing how our guys respond."
The Pioneers, who were impressive in winning their season-opener on Monday over the University of St. Thomas, 60-58, came out like gang-busters against
Barclay (0-1), a National Christian College Athletic Association school from Haviland, Kan., treating this weekend's games as exhibition. Wayland jumped out to a 22-10 lead seven minutes into the contest.
Then the Bears and coach Royce Bryan began proving what Garnett told his team before the game.
"Royce is a good friend and he's always done a good job with his team," Garnett said. "He had his guys really ready to play, more ready than we were. I give those guys a lot of credit."
Barclay scored seven straight points to close the gap to five, and although the Bears never came closer than that the rest of the evening, Wayland wasn't able to put them away until late.
A 3-pointer just before the halftime horn cut the Pioneers' 13-point lead to 47-37. The Bears cut it to eight on a couple of occasions early in the second half, the last time at 50-42. That's when Wayland set off on an 18-2 run that finally put Barclay away as the Pioneers led by 24 with more than 13 minutes left.
The final 29-point margin matched Wayland's biggest spread.
"I thought our guys for the majority of the night really attempted to play hard," Garnett said before taking the blame for his team's lack of focus and sharpness. "Our big challenge is to play smarter and play with a better rhythm on offense and with better execution on defense. I didn't do a very good job of coaching them tonight.
"Whatever carries over from practice to game is who your are, it's your habits. Our guys are very good young men and they're going to get a better effort from me tonight in film session and (Saturday) in game prep."
Veteran
Royal Crouch hit 7-of-9 field goals and led all scorers with 20 points, followed by
Robert Waters with 15,
Bunja Yaboe with 13 and
Jacob Lancaster with 10 off the bench. Twelve of the 14 Pioneers who saw action scored.
Barclay was led by Adrian Maloney Jr. with 11 points. Tanner Huck and Jay Milton added 10 each.
Lancaster pulled down eight rebounds, one fewer than
Jordon Johnson's team-best as Wayland dominated the boards, 46-27.
"Our big focus is to try to play every possession, and I think that's something we're not doing yet. It requires a great amount of focus in order to do that," Garnett said. "We're going to have an opportunity to try to improve (Saturday) afternoon. We'll have a hungry team staring at us, and I guarantee Barclay will be ready to play.
"They're going to be a heck of a battle (Saturday) because they're a good, scrappy team."
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