Ferris hangs tough with nation­ally ranked Division I Dayton

The Bulldog bas­ket­ball team came up short against the nation­ally ranked University of Dayton last week.

Ferris held strong against Dayton, which is cur­rently ranked 22^nd in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, but ulti­mately fell 88–73 in an exhi­bi­tion match on Nov. 3.

Despite the loss, head coach Bill Sall was happy with the per­for­mance from his team.

“I thought we improved a lot from the first exhi­bi­tion game,” said Sall. “We have the mak­ings of a good team, but we have some things to work on.”

The Bulldogs jumped out to an early 9–6 lead in the first half, but Dayton responded with an unan­swered 14 point scor­ing drive. The Flyers con­tin­ued their strong play in the first period and took a 48–35 advan­tage into halftime.

Dayton began the sec­ond half with another scor­ing run to give the Flyers an 18-point lead, which was the biggest lead of the night.

Following the run, the Bulldogs outscored the Flyers 16–5 to close the gap to 10 points with 12 min­utes left in the game. Ferris would not get any closer, how­ever, as Dayton held on down the stretch for the victory.

Among the lead­ers for the Bulldogs was junior forward/center Justin Keenan who led the way with a game-high 25 points. Senior guard Austin Randel dropped in 22 points and junior guard Darien Gay con­tributed 10 points. Keenan is a pre­sea­son NCAA Division II All-American.

“Keenan played very well for us and I think he was the best player on the court,” said Sall. “It really says some­thing con­sid­er­ing the level of com­pe­ti­tion we were going against.”

After the matchup with Dayton, the Bulldogs head into their final exhi­bi­tion game at Calvin College look­ing to be fully pre­pared for the reg­u­lar season.

The team will have to over­come the injury bug early in the sea­son, as sopho­more guard Dontae Molden suf­fered an injury just five min­utes into the Dayton game. Sall said he is a lit­tle con­cerned with the injury since the depth at point guard has been affected.

Despite the early-season injury con­cerns, Keenan feels con­fi­dent going into the final exhi­bi­tion game.

“We are really con­fi­dent at this point,” said Keenan. “Most of us have been here for awhile and we feel like we’ve really started run­ning on all cylinders.”

The con­test against Calvin, which is coach Sall’s alma mater, will take place on Nov. 15 at Van Noord Arena in Grand Rapids.