Southaven, MS—The Valdosta State Blazers saw their hopes of winning the Gulf South Conference tournament come to an end on Saturday night as they fell to the Wonder Boys of Arkansas Tech, 57-48.
“They’re really good. They’re really good,” VSU head coach Mike Helfer said. “That is the best team that I have seen in my five years here and since I have been a head coach. I was very impressed. I think we are a good team that played extremely bad in one game.”
VSU shot a season low 30.9 percent (17-55) from the floor while ATU shot only 36 percent.
“We have great kids, who are great players and hopefully they understand that when I tell them in the locker room that we probably wouldn’t beat that team if we played them ten times today that they understand that,” Helfer said. “We have great kids who will bounce back. If you look at the Alabama-Huntsville game, we bounced back and played well against West Georgia, so I would expect us to play well in the NCAA tournament.”
Tristan Crawford led VSU on the night with 13 points while bringing down six rebounds as Ryan Nelson added eight points, six of which came in the first half.
Arkansas Tech took advantage of a slow start for VSU, 2-14 from the floor; as the Wonder Boys built a 16-5 lead with 11:31 to play in the opening half.
VSU crawled back as they brought the ATU lead to just five, 21-16, with 4:15 to play in the opening half.
Five quick points for Arkansas Tech have them a nine point lead, which was the margin at the half.
“It got to the point that we were down six and we missed a front end 1 and 1 and they came down and got a three point play and I thought that was a critical play in swing heading into halftime,” Helfer said.
The Blazers struggles continued in the second half as ATU opened the half on an 8-2 run. The Blazers never managed to get anything going in the second half, as they managed to get within nine points of ATU with less than two minutes to play.
All-American Tyrone Curnell was held to a career low in points with two, both of which came on foul shots, as Curnell was 0-10 from the floor.
“They did exactly what I would have done,” Helfer said. “They gained up on him every time he touched it. He did a terrible job at passing it out of those situations.”
Despite outrebounding ATU 45-32, the Blazers turned the ball over 26 times which quickly led to 31 points for the Wonder Boys.
“That’s how they play,” Helfer said. “I mean they try to turn you over and they want to go on runs and they want to make the game very ratty. It is like organized chaos. They know exactly what they are doing and we really just didn’t handle it well.”
The 48 points scored by Valdosta State is a season low, which was previously 58 when the Blazers knocked off West Georgia.
“It is a quite locker room right now,” VSU senior Ryan Nelson said. “We have to keep our heads up knowing that the seasons not over. Granite this is something that we wanted and this was one of our goals at the beginning of the season but obviously that is out of reach right now so we have to stay together and get ready for the next one.”
With the loss, the Blazers look forward to the NCAA South regional tournament, which is set to begin on Mar 14.
“We just need to focus at the next game at hand,” Nelson said. “This game brought us back to reality a little bit. We are not as good of a team as we think we are. We need to work harder.”