The Raiders made 16 of 22 shots in the first half in building a 15-point lead and 34 of 55 overall (61.8%) in soaring to a 102-90 road victory Sunday at Cleveland State.
They scored their most points in a game this season, tallying 51 in each half, and shot their highest percentage against a D-I opponent. They hit 64.4% against Ohio Wesleyan.
WSU shot a season-best 70.6% from 3, going 12 of 17.
The Raiders improved to 17-10 overall and 12-4 in the Horizon League, building a two-game lead on Oakland with four games to go. The Grizzlies lost Sunday at Robert Morris for its third straight defeat.
Green Bay also had a Sunday game which it lost at Milwaukee to fall 2.5 games back along with Robert Morris.
“I’m proud of a lot of the steadiness in our play. We can be better and we will be better. But this is a healthy win on the road that we’re thankful for,” coach Clint Sargent said on his post-game radio show.
“But our guys understand, we can be better defensively (Cleveland State shot 51.5%). We can have consistent effort. We just had so many breakdowns.”
The Raiders avenged an 85-79 loss at home to CSU on Jan. 21.
After dropping a one-point game at Youngstown State, they cruised to a 93-83 home win.
The lone team left on the revenge circuit is Robert Morris, which has a 72-66 victory over Wright State and comes to the Nutter Center at 2 p.m. Sunday in an ESPNU game.
Redshirt freshman Alex Bruskotter, who hadn’t played for a month until making a brief appearance against Detroit Mercy on Thursday, poured in 25 points on 6-of-8 shooting, making all three of his 3’s.
TJ Burch scored 15 of his 23 points in the first half without missing a shot, finishing 9 of 11 from the field and 4 of 4 on 3’s. He also had eight assists.
Dom Pangonis had 18 points. And Michael Imariagbe had 12 points and 10 rebounds.
The Vikings (10-17, 6-10) closed the deficit to 57-52 with 15:08 to go. But the Raiders regained their balance and went on an 15-5 run after that on their march to victory.
Junior guard Chevalier Emery had 30 points for CSU.
“I told the guys, ‘When teams beat us, and understandably so, it’s celebration time.’ We walked into that locker room, one, very happy for Alex and, two, knowing we could have played a lot better. We just let our guard down,” Sargent said.
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