Box Score
San Francisco, CA -- The Urban Knights fought all game to make up an early deficit, but Dixie State put Academy of Art in a hole they couldn't get out of as they dropped their first PacWest home game of the year. Despite a strong second half from the Knights at Kezar Pavilion, the Red Storm upheld the first half lead to put the Knights away 85-72.
Ameer Shamsud-din starred in the loss, leading all scorers with 28 points and also dishing out eight assists and bringing down five rebounds in the loss. He was the go-to man for the Urban Knights and spread it around, going 3-for-8 from three-point range and making 7 of 8 from the free throw line.
"We don't go into a game with the plan of featuring one player," said head coach Mark Sembrowich. "But Ameer took advantage of what Dixie gave him. He picked up the slack, and really stepped up when we needed him to."
The Knights only managed 24 points in the first half, with Shamsud-din chipping in 14 of those, and went in at the half down by ten. But they seemed to make the necessary adjustments in the locker room, because they exploded for 48 points in the second half, with every player who checked in the game scoring at least two points.
The Knights made a run at the end of the first half to cut the deficit from 15 to 10, and came out in the second half continuing the scoring, getting within five of Dixie at the eleven-minute mark at 52-47. But the Red Storm answered every time ART U made a run, and ended up pushing the lead to double-digits for the final minutes of the game.
"Dixie is a real good club," Sembrowich said. "They played some good defense and we were a little uncomfortable in the first half, which put us at a disadvantage. But we battled back in the second half and got close."
Academy of Art and Dixie State actually had the same amount of field goals (25), and the Knights made eight 3-pointers to the Red Storm's three. But in a game full of whistles on both sides (there were 53 total fouls), Dixie came out on top from the free throw line by a large margin, shooting 42 from the charity stripe to the Urban Knights' 20, and sinking 35.
The stop and go play made it tough for ART U to really get in a rhythm, and the cycling of players off the bench to stay out of foul trouble disrupted the strings of baskets that they showed the potential to put together once they figured out the Red Storm's defense. William Overton, Jr. had eleven points and five rebounds, and Noah Koné-Nelson and BJ Prema both added eight points. Hunter Hayden totaled four rebounds and three blocks in the game as well.
The Urban Knights had their hands full with five members of Dixie State scoring in double figures, led by Derek Owen with 18 points. McKay Massey was right behind him with 16 points, and Griffon Jones added 15 points, nine rebounds, and five assists. Those three went a combined 17 of 19 from the free throw line.
The Knights will welcome the Cal Baptist University Lancers to Kezar Pavilion on Thursday night, in a rematch two weeks in the making after Cal Baptist defeated Academy of Art 73-59 on December 17. They will then hop on a plane to take on the PacWest's Hawaiian schools on Saturday.
"Right now we're not looking at anything except Cal Baptist," Coach Sembrowich said. "We've already played them once so we have a bit of familiarity and we need get ourselves prepared to get after them on Thursday night."
