maly, too: 19 Points By Freshman Micah Mason Spur Drake, 74-56

Saturday, December 22, 2012

19 Points By Freshman Micah Mason Spur Drake, 74-56

Hot shooting and a career-high 19 points by freshman Micah Mason of Allegheny, Pa., helped Drake’s basketball team defeat Eastern Illinois, 74-56, at the Knapp Center Saturday afternoon.

Drake (6-5) shot 56.1 percent (23-of-41) from the field while connecting on 13-of-22 from behind the three-point arc (59.1 percent) and 15-of-18 (83.3 percent) from the free throw line. Mason knocked down a career-high five three-pointers to go along with a career-high six assists in his second start. Eastern Illinois (3-10) was led by Sherman Blanford with 18 points and seven rebounds.

“I’m really happy with the way we played,” Drake coach Mark Phelps said. “I thought our intensity was really good at times. As we continue to put together 40 minutes of basketball, we have the potential to be good. We continue to play well on the offensive end and we need to keep concentrating on the defensive end.”

Ben Simons (Cadillac, Mich.) scored 14 points and grabbed four rebounds while Seth VanDeest (Bettendorf) had 10 points and three rebounds. Chris Hines (Houston) was the other Bulldog in double figures with 11 points. The Bulldogs were without the Missouri Valley Conference’s rebounding leader as senior Jordan Clarke (Rockville, Md.) missed the game with an injury.

Drake led for the majority of the first half and took a 33-26 lead into halftime courtesy of a 9-0 run to close the half as the Panthers’ methodical offense dictated the tempo of the game.

However, the Bulldogs asserted control of that tempo in the second half as Mason made a three-pointer 25 seconds into the half and later added a layup as Drake built its lead to 38-26. The Panthers ended their scoreless streak after Alex Austin made a free throw at the 17:13 mark to account for five scoreless minutes for EIU.

“I thought we had a nice flurry there, especially in transition,” Phelps said. “Micah hit a three and then found Gary [Ricks] for two threes. We just ask him [Mason] to be aggressive, but play the right way.”

The Panthers battled back to cut Drake’s lead to 47-39 after Austin Akers made a three-pointer, but Simons answered with his third three-pointer of the day to push Drake’s lead to 50-39 with 13:27 remaining. The Bulldogs used a 13-2 scoring run over the next four minutes to take its lead to 63-41 with 8:34 left to go in the game. A layup by Jeremy Jeffers (Wilson, N.C.) gave Drake its largest lead of the game at 24 points, 73-49, with 3:35 remaining and allowed Phelps to empty his bench.

The Bulldogs opened the game hot with 12 points in the first 2:30 and took a 19-14 lead at the second media timeout of the first half behind six points each from Simons and VanDeest.

Out of the media timeout Drake was held scoreless for nearly five minutes and fell behind, 26-24, before a pair of Bulldog freshmen stepped up with much needed points on consecutive possessions. Joey King (Egan, Minn.), who started in place of Clarke, made two free throws and Mason connected on a three-pointer from the right baseline to help Drake take a 29-26 lead. Simons added a jumper and pair of free throws to give the Bulldogs a 33-26 lead at the break. Drake’s tough defense kept the Panthers scoreless for the final four minutes of the first half.

Drake will break for the holiday and will start Missouri Valley Conference action at Bradley on Dec. 29 at 7 p.m.

“It’s always nice to get a win before the break and go into the holidays on a good note,” Phelps said. “The conference season gets started in a week and there’s many, many challenges for us. Every game is going to be a battle and I think our non-conference schedule has prepared us for the Valley.”

[ This story was written for Ron Maly by Ty Patton, Drake's assistant athletic director for communications].

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.