At Bellarmine         At Kentucky Wesleyan

The UW-Parkside men's basketball team began a four-game road trip with a game at Bellarmine Saturday night. Bellarmine was projected as the No. 1 ranked team in the country in a pre-season poll conducted by The Sporting News. The team then went on to Kentucky Wesleyan on Monday, a team ranked No. 18 in the nation.

The Knights charged to a fast 10-0 lead, then held off the Rangers, 82-75. UWP then fell at Kentucky Wesleyan, 78-64.

At KWC
    After trailing by 14 points at halftime, the Rangers played the powerful Panthers even in the second half as each team scored 35 points.

KWC out-boarded the Rangers, 41-31 and scored 34 of its points off the bench including 19 from Andree Wilson.

Zach Blesich played his second solid game in a row, this time scoring 19 points to go with six rebounds.

At Bellarmine
"It was our best game of the year," said UW-Parkside head coach Luke Reigel. "You never like to lose, but I saw some good things out there today."

The Rangers dug in to the Knight lead to trail, 37-30, at halftime. The lead shrunk to 56-53 at one point, before Bellarmine pulled away for good.

Jeremy Kendle of Bellarmine led all scorers with 27 points. Blesich was Parkside's high man with 20 points which included four three-pointers. 

Grant Johnson tallied a dozen points, while Ryan Callozzo and Jeremy Saffold added 11 and 10 points respectively.

The Rangers out-rebounded the Knights, 34-29. Steve Jaskulske was the top man on the boards with eight rebounds.

Parkside's record is 6-6 overall and 1-3 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference heading into the next two games of a four-game road trip. The team moves on to play conference new-comer Illinois-Springfield Thursday, Jan. 7. The game tips off at approximately 7:30 p.m. and can be heard on 1400AM, WRJN, and by going to 'Game Day' and selecting 'Live Audio' at the top right-hand portion of this page.