SNC men stay in conference title hunt

By Rich Palzewic
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
DE PERE – Behind the hot first-half shooting of Jamison Nickolai, the St. Norbert College men’s basketball team kept its winning streak intact.
Nickolai pumped in 18 first-half points — including five 3-pointers — to help the Green Knights post a 72-53 victory over Concordia University Wisconsin in Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) action on Jan. 31 at the Mulva Sports Center in De Pere.
The win bumped St. Norbert’s current winning streak to six games.
Nickolai was 5 of 6 from beyond the arc in his 14 minutes of play in the opening half.
The Green Knights (13-7 overall, 10-3 NACC) sophomore also grabbed five rebounds and collected a steal before intermission.
“Our defense fueled the offense tonight,” said Nickolai, who also converted on a four-point play. “The second 3 I made (on the four-point play) got me going and gave me confidence.”
Nickolai, a Sheboygan Falls graduate, came into the game averaging 8.4 points per game.
“Jamison struggled a bit early in the season with his shooting,” St. Norbert coach Gary Grzesk said. “In the last five games, he’s come on and played with a lot of confidence. He’s comfortable coming off the bench — he’s still playing starter minutes. If we need him at the end of the game, he’ll probably be in there. I’m happy for him.”
The Green Knights did almost everything right during the first 15 minutes of the game — building a 39-12 lead.
“We got off to a great start,” Grzesk said. “We spent quite a bit of time preparing for Concordia’s zone. Since the first time we played them, they’ve been sitting more in a 2-3 zone — we attacked it. Sometimes, the tendency is to relax and shoot more jump shots. We shot quite a few outside shots tonight, but I was also happy with how we moved the ball inside.”
From there, the Falcons ended the half on an 8-0 run to cut the lead to 39-20 at the break.
Concordia began the second half with another 8-0 surge, prompting a timeout from Grzesk.
“That’s been our downfall this season,” Grzesk said. “We play well in stretches, but we’ve yet to put it together for 40 minutes. It’s a bit of human nature to relax when you get a big lead. You forget how hard you had to work to get that lead. The way we ended the first half and began the second half was disappointed, but we responded from there.”
Nickolai ended with 22 points to lead all scorers.
Carter Gebler (11 points), Michael Payant (10) and Evan Glaser (10) also scored in double digits for St. Norbert, which shot 49% overall from the field.
Nickolai and Payant each grabbed seven rebounds, while Gebler had a team-leading six assists.
Conference race
With four conference games remaining — three of which are on the road — the Green Knights sit one game behind Wisconsin Lutheran.
“We’ve given ourselves a chance,” Grzesk said. “We dropped two conference games earlier in the season against Wisconsin Lutheran and Marian, which was disappointing, but we’ve been
playing pretty well lately. We have to take care of ourselves. I still think there is a lot of room for improvement.”
St. Norbert and Wisconsin Lutheran square off in Milwaukee on Feb. 7.
“We have four games left,” Grzesk said. “It’s winding down — I think the guys understand the urgency.”
Nickolai said the Concordia Wisconsin game was a must-win.
“If we wanted to have a shot at the NACC title, we had to win this game,” he said. “It’s nice to keep the momentum going with having three of our last four (conference) games on the road.”
Because an originally scheduled home game against Concordia University Chicago on Feb. 11 won’t happen, Grzesk said the highest winning percentage in conference will determine the
NACC champion.
“The Concordia Chicago game will be considered a no-contest,” he said. “Some teams already played them twice, but we’ve only played them once.”