NAMPA, Idaho – Saint Martin's opened GNAC play this week on the road against Northwest Nazarene. The Saints pulled away in the second half and cruised to a 78-63 win against the Nighthawks.
The Salem Wings led the charge for the Saints as
Tyke Thompson (25) and
Kyle Greeley (23) combine for 48 of the team's 78 points. The duo were efficient from the field as Thompson shot 8/10 from the field including 5/6 from deep to go along with eight rebounds and Greeley went 7/10 from the floor and a perfect 2/2 from deep to complement his six boards.
Head coach
Aaron Landon went with the starting lineup of
Jaden Nielsen-Skinner,
Hunter Sipe,
Nathaniel Stokes,
Shakeem Alcindor and Greeley. This marked the first start of the season for Sipe. After NNU opened the game with an and-one layup, Greeley laced a three pointer to open the scoring for Saint Martin's and knot the game up 3-3. From here, the two teams traded blows throughout the half until the Saints used a 14-3 run to give themselves a 34-28 lead with just over a minute left in the half. The Nighthawks responded with a mini run of their own and SMU went into the locker rooms with a 37-35 lead.
Whatever was said during the half was well received as the Saints opened the second half with a massive 20-8 run to put them up 57-43 with 13 minutes left. Saint Martin's never looked back from here as they went on the win the game 78-63.
Coach Landon shared his thoughts on his team's performance in their first conference game, "I'm really proud of how our guys competed tonight against a tough and physical NNU team. That's a really tough environment to play in and we were awesome defensively in the second half. Road wins in the GNAC are special and we had a lot of guys step up to get this done tonight. Tyke and Kyle obviously scored it well for us tonight but what they did on the glass was huge for us too".
Saint Martin's will be coming back to Washington for their next GNAC matchup against Central Washington Saturday, December 3rd at 7:30 PM. Live stats and video will be available on smusaints.com.
