MCMINNVILLE, ORE. – The Linfield men's basketball team fell to the Northwest University Eagles of the NAIA Saturday at Ted Wilson Gymnasium, 85-63.
The Wildcats (0-1) were unable to withstand a hot-shooting night from the Eagles (2-1), who poured in 12 threes on 24 attempts.
Linfield scored 33 points off the bench, 12 from
Jacob Hjort, who led the 'Cars on the night in scoring while adding a team-high four assists in what was Linfield's 2022-23 season opener.
Alex Jackzo was Linfield's second-leading scorer with 11 points on 4-6 shooting.
Trey Bryant led the team in rebounds with 11.
The game was even to begin, and Linfield led four times early on. The Wildcats' largest lead of the night came when Bryant stole the ball and scored on a fast-break layup to make it 21-18 10 minutes left to plau .
But Northwest tied the score at 21 on a three-pointer from Bryson Drew on the next possession and regained the lead for the rest of the game on a Pa'treon Lee layup with 9:03 to play in the half. They would eventually lead 53-29 at the break.
Northwestern shot 69 percent from the field and 70 percent from three in the first half and ended up shooting 55.4 percent on field goals and 50 percent on threes for the game.
Drew led all scorers with 29 points and six made threes.
Linfield shot just 36.4 percent from the field for the game and lost the rebounding battle 38-30.
"Tough game to win when you don't shoot well," said Linfield head Coach
Shanan Rosenberg after the loss.
"We had some good moments and stretches but we just ran into a red-hot team tonight. Give Northwest credit, they shot the lights out, some of it was our defense by much of it was just them making shots."
The Wildcats did manage to score 20 points off 18 Northwestern turnovers and 11 second chance points off 15 offensive rebounds.
Freshman Danilo Petrovic led Linfield in scoring in the second half with 8 points. He was one of four Wildcats to make their collegiate debuts on Saturday, along with TreyVaughn Bierlink, Logan Morrill and Chase Bennett, who collected his first career start and led the four freshmen with 23 minutes.
"We will get better from this," said Rosenberg. "We have an outstanding group of guys that will take this to heart and respond."
NEXT
Linfield will look to bounce back Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7:00 against another NAIA squad, Eastern Oregon, also in McMinnville.
They'll then travel to California for the UCSC Classic hosted by UC-Santa Cruz. They'll play UCSC on Friday, Nov. 18 before taking on the Caltech Beavers on Nov. 19.