Valparaiso, IN (Sports Network) – Erik Buggs scored a game-high 22 points to lead Valparaiso to its first ever Horizon League championship with a 62-54 win over Wright State on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Will Bogan scored 14 points and Kevin Van Wijk added 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Crusaders (26-7), who lost in the Horizon League title game to Detroit last season.<\/p>\n
It will be Valparaiso’s first trip the NCAA Tournament since 2004.<\/p>\n
Reggie Arceneaux was the only Raiders (21-12) player in double figures with 14 points.<\/p>\n
The Crusaders trailed 50-44 following Matt Vest’s three at the 5:37 mark, but exploded for a 7-0 run.<\/p>\n
Van Wijk got things started with a layup before Buggs scored five straight to hand Valparaiso a 51-50 edge.<\/p>\n
Ryan Broekhoff, who nailed a buzzer-beat to send the Crusaders to the title game on Saturday, hadn’t made a field goal since just over four minutes into the game, but drilled a trey with 1:52 left to give Valparaiso a 54-50 lead.<\/p>\n
Coming into the game, Broekhoff led the Crusaders in scoring, averaging 16.2 points per game. He was also shooting 44 percent from 3-point range, but struggled to find his stroke all night. Broekhoff finished with seven points on 2-of-8 shooting, including 1-for-6 from 3-point range, but came through when his team needed it the most.<\/p>\n
Valparaiso would score six more points before Tavares Sledge tipped in an Arceneaux miss with 13 seconds left.<\/p>\n
Van Wijk knocked down a pair of free throws with six seconds left, and Jerran Young’s dunk accounted for the final margin.<\/p>\n
Wright State trailed by 11 to start the second half, but quickly tied the game, 40-40, following a pair of Miles Dixon free throws.<\/p>\n
Arceneaux’s trey with 9 1\/2 minutes left gave the Raiders a 45-42 lead, Wright State quickly pushed the spread to 50-44.<\/p>\n
Valparaiso held a 36-25 lead at the break.<\/p>\n
Game Notes<\/p>\n
The Crusaders set a school record for wins in a season. The previous record of 25 was set in 2001-2002 … Valparaiso was efficient from the floor, shooting a 53.8 percent clip, but turned it over 25 times … The Crusaders evened up the all-time series at 11-11 … Sledge, Young and A.J. Pacher each finished with seven points for Wright State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valparaiso, IN (Sports Network) – Erik Buggs scored a game-high 22 points to lead Valparaiso to its first ever Horizon League championship with a 62-54 win over Wright State on Tuesday. Will Bogan scored 14 points and Kevin Van Wijk added 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Crusaders (26-7), who lost in the Horizon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncaa-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}