After a suc­cess­ful December, the Ferris men’s bas­ket­ball team has had a rough start to January.

Entering this month, the team had won five of six December con­tests, includ­ing tak­ing first place at the 36^th annual Porreco Cup Championship in Erie, Pa.

However, 2010 has not been a good year for the Bulldogs so far, as the team has dropped three straight games against con­fer­ence opponents.

In the first match-up of 2010 for Ferris, the team suf­fered an 81–55 loss at the hands of GLIAC north divi­sion co-leader Lake Superior State dur­ing a home con­test last Thursday.

Despite lead­ing 29–28 at half­time, the Bulldogs could not increase the lead in the sec­ond half as the team shot only 27.3 per­cent from the field.
The Lakers had no prob­lem putting points on the board, as the team shot an incred­i­ble 64 per­cent from the field and outscored Ferris 53–26 in the half to clinch the victory.

Coming off the tough loss to Lake Superior State, the Bulldogs looked to rebound against the Saginaw Valley State Cardinals at home on Saturday.

The Bulldogs main­tained a lead for the major­ity of the half and headed into half­time with a 37–32 advan­tage. In the sec­ond half, both teams traded buck­ets as the lead changed six times in the first 11 minutes.

The Cardinals pulled away late in the game, as Saginaw Valley went on to outscore Ferris 21–8 in the final 4:52 to come out on top, 86–72.

Even with Ferris hav­ing four play­ers with double-digit scor­ing nights, the down­fall came from foul trou­ble as the team was whis­tled for 29 per­sonal fouls, while Saginaw Valley com­mit­ted only 16. Head coach Bill Sall attrib­uted many of the fouls to poor positioning.

“A cou­ple of those fouls could have gone either way,” said Sall. “But we were just out of posi­tion so much and most of the calls were a direct result of that.”

Senior guard Josh Young scored 19 points and junior guard Darien Gay scored 15 points on five three-pointers for the Bulldogs.

After los­ing to the Cardinals, Ferris had lit­tle time to recover as the team headed to Allendale to take on rival Grand Valley State on Monday.

The Bulldogs got off to a rough start in the first half, as they com­mit­ted eight turnovers while allow­ing the Lakers to shoot 51.6 per­cent from the field. The team headed into half­time trail­ing Grand Valley 41–23.

Ferris bat­tled back early in the sec­ond half, as the team skimmed the lead to eight points with 14:35 left in the game.

The Bulldogs could not close the gap as Grand Valley held on down the stretch for an 80–68 vic­tory, aveng­ing the conference-opening 61–47 loss in Big Rapids ear­lier in the season.

The major­ity of the Bulldogs’ points came from junior forward/center Justin Keenan and senior guard Jon Yeazel, who posted 23 and 21 points respectively.

With the cur­rent string of losses plung­ing Ferris to 6–7 over­all and 4–4 in con­fer­ence play, Sall knows the next few games will be cru­cial to the way the rest of the sea­son shapes up.

“At this time of the year, you can’t just fix things in prac­tice,” said Sall. “We’re going to have to rebound men­tally because this is gut-check time.”

The team will con­tinue play on the road this week with a matchup at Tiffin University tomor­row and will fin­ish the road trip against Ashland on Saturday.