@unco_mbb Takes Care of Business Against Johnson & Wales

Wednesday, November 2

Greeley, CO

7:00 p.m.

University of Northern Colorado

Johnson & Wales University

PREVIEW: Bears Open 2025-26 Campaign Monday Night Against Colorado College

Friday, October 31

Bears Picked Third in Big Sky Preseason Coaches’ and Media Polls

Wednesday, October 22

Single-Game Tickets On Sale Now for Men’s Basketball, Women’s Basketball, and Wrestling

Monday, October 13

Season Tickets Now Available for UNC Men’s & Women’s Basketball and Wrestling

Tuesday, September 16

Roberto Vercellino

/ Men's Basketball

Photo by: Dean Popejoy

11/2/2016 10:13:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

By: Kobee Stalder, UNCBears.com

GREELEY, Colo. – Northern Colorado men's basketball shook off the year long rust in an exhibition game against Johnson & Wales (Colo.) on Wednesday night. As expected, the Bears took care of business with a 91-67 win over the Wildcats.

How It Happened:
It took UNC some time to get adjusted offensively and played back and forth with the Wildcats for the first five minutes of the game.

Once the nerves of the new season were gone, the Bears played ball, particularly behind the shot of sophomore guard, Jordan Davis. Davis put up 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting in the first half.

After two straight trips to the free throw line, Johnson and Wales cut to within two of UNC, 15-13 at the 9:05 mark. From there, the home team used an 18-3 run, with Davis accounting for 10 of those 18 points to gather some breathing room.

Once the Bears got comfortable running first year head coach, Jeff Linder's offense, they worked like a well oiled machine and were especially good in transition, recording 15 fast break points in the first half alone and took a 40-22 lead into the break.

Though they didn't shoot particularly well from beyond the arc (18.8%), they didn't need to, getting 14 of their 40 points down low in the paint.

The beginning of the second half was more of the same. UNC shared the rock, dishing out 15 of its 21 assists and pushed the lead to over 30 points (63-31) with 13:45 to play.

Coach Linder used the remaining minutes to give much needed playing time to the younger players, such as, Kai Edwards, Mike Ranson and Roberto Vercellino. Vercellino made the minutes count, finishing with a double-double of 10 points and 13 rebounds.

JWU crawled back into the game some, cutting the UNC lead from 31 to 15 (79-62) over a 10-minute stretch, but that is as close as it came for the Wildcats for the remainder of the contest.

After it was all said and done, the Bears shot 40.6% (26-of-64) from the field and 25.0% (8-of-25) from three-point land.

Game Changer:
Sophomore guard, Jordan Davis was the engine that made UNC go. Davis finished with game-high 23 points, shot 66.6% from the floor and dished out six assists.

Key Stat:
Northern Colorado's defense forced 22 Johnson and Wales' turnovers which resulted in 26 points for the Bears.

In Their Words:
Head Coach, Jeff Linder:
"I thought there was a lot of good things – the last twelve minutes kind of got away from us a little bit, but other than that I thought we did a really good job on the defensive end. They shot seventeen percent from the field in the first half – the second half, you know, that last twelve minutes have got to be better than that. At halftime we talked about defensively, we're on our side of the floor in the first half, so it's easy to communicate with them, but now in the second half you get away from our bench and we talked about how are we going to respond to that, especially being such a young team, so it's going to be good to go over the film and it will be a good teaching moment for our guys."

On the newcomers performance:
"They performed better than I thought they would. When you do a scrimmage it's closed, it's not under the bright lights, there are no fans, so it was good to play this game to get some of the jitters out of their system and play in front of some people. "

Sophomore guard, Jordan Davis
"It felt real good to be back and see guys like Roberto [Vercellino], Mike [Ranson], Kai [Edwards] get adapted to college basketball. Seeing guys handle game-like situations was the most exciting part, so I can't wait until Butler."

On the second half:
"The coaching staff's offense is set up to move the ball around and I feel like we did a lot of that in both halves, but we weren't executing. The assist number jumped up in the second half because we were making shots and executing, so that's just one thing we have to go back to the drawing board on and preach to the guys – we have to finish. We had a lot of open looks today, but we just didn't finish on some of them."

Freshman forward, Roberto Vercellino
"We've been waiting a long, long time for this game to arrive, but it was the first game for most of us in Division I college basketball, so as everybody saw, the first minutes we had to take our time to get into the game and get the nervousness out and play like we play every day in the gym."

Notables:
- UNC had four players finish in double figures led by Jordan Davis' 23 points. Chaz Glotta (14 points), Jon'te Dotson (13 points) and Roberto Vercellino (10 points) were the other three.
- UNC outrebounded JWU 51-42.
- The Bears got out of the blocks quickly and played well in transition, scoring 27 fast break points, compared to the Wildcats' four.
- Northern Colorado also had plenty of second chance opportunities, hauling in 23 offensive boards.

Up Next:
Northern Colorado will officially open the season on the road in Indianapolis, Indiana as they take on Butler University Saturday, Nov. 12 at 5:30 p.m. (MT). The next home game for the Bears will be on Nov. 16 against Colorado Christian. Single game and season tickets can be purchased online at UNCBears.com.