MUNCIE, Ind. — After losing their last home game 69-67 to the Central Michigan Chippewas last Tuesday, Ball State Men’s looks to improve on the little things that contribute to cutting the nets in March.
Although getting positive tallies added to the winning column is what will technically get the Cardinals to the next level, head coach Michael Lewis knows it's going to take a ton of keys that are easily ignored.
“We’re not there, there’s too many other things that are important other than winning in my opinion,” Lewis said. “It's probably not best I speculate, but I've been with these guys, and just our mentality to continue to chip away doing the little things and not get caught up in the emotion of everything just doing one play after another.”
The Cardinals led by as much as 21 points at one point in the game, but in the end, they gave up an easily avoidable last-second basket.
They lost their motor through the course of the second half and eventually ran out of gas in the final minutes. The Chippewas took notice and took advantage by attacking the Cardinals where it hurt.
Lewis explained that defense is the first order of business in rebuilding the Cardinals to reach new heights in success.
“Our defense is just not good enough to win games at this level, and that's the disappointing part,” Lewis said. “Give Central Michigan a lot of credit, they had every reason to lay down, they kept fighting and their competitive spirit was so much better than ours, we lost a game we shouldn't have lost, but we had a few of those.”
Contact Calvin Scott with comments at calvin.scott@bsu.edu.
