After a win in Saturday's season opener against West Coast Baptist and a tough loss Tuesday night to California State University San Marcos, the men’s basketball team rounds out their opening week of the season with potential.
Saturday night, Biola exploded into action against West Coast Baptist. The Eagles looked as if they were already in midseason form. They ran the floor extremely well, as well as getting everyone involved.
Dakari Archer, a true freshman, led the Eagles with 19 points. Not far behind him was the other newcomer to the team, Pierre Zook, who added an additional 14 points. But it wasn't all about the guard play Tuesday night as the veteran big man inside, Andre Murillo, came away with the team’s first double-double of the year, dropping 10 points and grabbing 13 rebounds.
"I am not satisfied, and don't care about the amount of points I score as long as we get the win," Archer said.
Despite only being up by six at the half, Biola blew past WCBC in the second half to end the night with a 74-55 win.
A TOUGH HOME LOSS
With the season's first win under their belt, all the attention was then turned to the home-opener against San Marcos Tuesday night. San Marcos was ranked fairly high in the preseason pull, and Biola knew they would have their hands full.
Biola started the game exactly where they left off against WCBC with their incredible energy and ability to get stops on defense.
The first half was neck-in-neck with multiple lead changes. San Marcos began to pull away towards the end of the first half until Zook and the Biola defenders decided to take control. Zook went coast to coast in the final seconds of the half to hit a three, and swing the momentum in Chase Gymnasium as they cut the lead from ten to four going into the half.
The second half didn't go as well as the Eagles would have hoped. They came out flat on defense and allowed San Marcos to hit four straight threes to begin the half; however, Biola wasn't going to go down without a fight.
Archer got the Eagles in rhythm as he scored six of his nine points of the night in the second half. Not only that, but he was able to continually feed Mike Kurtz and Murillo inside. Murillo finished with 17 points which also led the team. Zook came second in points with 15.
Despite the Eagles’ late run towards the end of the game to minimize San Marcos' lead to only seven with 50.2 seconds left, San Marcos was just too much for Biola and left Chase Gymnasium with a 74-65 victory.
"Our main problems tonight were getting out-rebounded and the amount of turnovers,” Archer said.
The Eagles end their first week of regular season basketball at .500. Biola will analyze their mistakes and improve on them, moving forward with the upcoming Carroll College Tournament which begins on Nov. 15.
