Pride men's basketball falls short in high scoring 98-90 loss to Valley City State
FOREST CITY, Iowa - Starting off their final set of back-to-back games of 2021, the Clarke University men's basketball team came up short in a 98-90 loss to Valley City State College on Friday night at Waldorf University's Cobblestone Inn and Suites Classic.
The Vikings led the game wire-to-wire including holding a 20-point lead in the second half as they were also able to hold off multiple CU comebacks to be able to hang on by the eventual eight-point win. The Pride got to within single digits during their late comeback attempt as a Biggie Luster three pointer made it 88-82 with 1:33 remaining in the game.
As they cut it to a two possession game, four points would be the closest Clarke could get at 94-90 with 25 seconds left but Valley City State got a layup and hit a pair of free throws to stretch it to the final 98-90 score.
Luster had his best scoring game in his early career as the freshman from Rockford, Ill. scored a career-high and game-high 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting from the field and a perfect 3-for-3 from three-point range. Luster really stuffed the stat sheet as well as he added eight rebounds, five assists, three steals, but also had the game-high with five turnovers.
The Pride had three other players in double figures with Jacob Fierst and Jordan Lake adding 19 and 18 points respectively out of the starting lineup and Anthony Eddy providing 12 points off the bench. Lake had a game-high nine assists for his sixth game with five or more assists to start the season but he also had four turnovers in the game.
Valley City State also had four players in double figures as Connor Entzi had a team-high 19 points, Chris Thompson and Kevin Schramm had 17 points, and Joshua Kelly added 11. The difference in the game for the Vikings came from three point range as they went 15-of-32 (46.9%) from deep as Clarke just fell shot of that number at 12-for-31 (38.7%).
Clarke men's basketball will turnaround to play the hosts of the Cobblestone Inn and Suites Classic when they face Waldorf University in a true road game Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. CT.