Fouls bench three key Northwest Vista players.
By R.T. Gonzalez
The Victoria College Pirates won their second Texas Collegiate Club Sports League tournament 83-78 against the Northwest Vista College Wildcats Sunday in the McDermott Convocation Center at the University of the Incarnate Word.
The game featured 30 fouls and three foul-outs by Northwest Vista, and two fascinating dunks including a 3-point play by Pirate sophomore Shannon Winston and another by Wildcats’ liberal arts freshman Desmond Hines.
Despite the fouls, Northwest Vista managed to keep the lead for the majority of the game.
Both teams traded the lead for the first 10 minutes, but Northwest Vista went on an 11-6 scoring run, which featured the dunk by Hines, to creep away from Victoria College.
The Pirates came back on a 10-7 scoring run of their own to bring the scoreboard to 39-33 with two minutes left in the first half. The Wildcats, however, still maintained the lead.
Fighting on but still behind, the Pirates trailed at the end of the half, 43-37.
Going into the second half, Northwest Vista continued where they left off for the first seven minutes.
Victoria College managed to catch up with a 12-point scoring run, tying the game at 49-49.
Within the next 11 minutes of the second half, Northwest Vista’s liberal arts sophomore Tory Prusak and business sophomore Turundus Luckett both fouled out of the game.
This left the Wildcats to face off against one of the Pirate’s key players — Winston.
“I went hard on defense,” Winston said. “In the clutch time, we put pressure on them and created turnovers.”
With one minute left in the game, Winston was able to pull off a 3-point play, which included a dunk that fouled out Hines.
“It was a hard fought game,” Victoria’s coach Jesse Ortega said. “We just dug deep and pulled out a victory.”
With three of the Wildcats’ main players on the bench, Northwest Vista left no contest for Victoria College who went on a 6-0 scoring run to end the game 83-78.
“Key players fouled out of the game made the difference,” Northwest Vista’s coach Irving Thomas said.