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Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Thursday, January 10, 2008

Warhawks edge UW-L men

By KIRK BEY / La Crosse Tribune

Believe it or not, what happened in the end Wednesday night wasn’t Ken Koelbl’s main concern.

Sure, it pained Koelbl, UW-La Crosse men’s basketball coach, to look up at the Mitchell Hall scoreboard and see the painful, final result: UW-Whitewater 65, UW-L 62. It hurt him to watch Whitewater guard Matt Goodwin’s long-range 3-pointer, an estimated

28-footer, go down a second before the final buzzer sounded.

On the other hand, Koelbl simply wanted to see the Eagles (6-7, 1-3 WIAC) turn in a better effort following Saturday’s 71-61 loss to UW-Superior. Final result notwithstanding, he believes UW-L gave him just that.

“Quite honestly, we told our guys we weren’t focusing on tonight’s outcome,” Koelbl said. “Our focus was on competing and battling hard, and tonight we did that.

“We gave ourselves a chance to win. ... We wanted our guys to feel like they left it all on the floor and not have any gas left in the tank.”

Unfortunately for the Eagles, Whitewater

(11-2, 4-1), ranked 15th by D3hoops.com, left them feeling empty.

Goodwin (21 points) won the game after UW-L freshman guard Tony Mane (17 points) tied it at 62 on a jumper with 18 seconds left. Warhawks forward Rob Perry scored five of his 12 points in the final 1 minute, 24 seconds of the game. Perry’s lone 3-pointer tied the game at 60, and he drained a pair of free throws to give Whitewater a

62-60 lead with 37 seconds left.

The Warhawks’ finish overshadowed several stellar individual performances by UW-L. Sophomore forward Andrew Haass scored nine points and pulled down six rebounds in his first collegiate start. Freshman guard Matt DeMars had seven points, seven assists and five rebounds. Freshman forward Alex Milsap scored seven points in seven minutes.

“I feel like we stole one tonight,” Whitewater coach Pat Miller said. “Other than our ability to get to the free-throw line, La Crosse beat us in every facet of the game.”

DeMars hopes the loss won’t knock the Eagles to the ground as they prepare for the second half of their schedule.

“Everyone is disappointed because we lost, but it was nice to see us all working together,” DeMars said. “We talked tonight about coming out and battling hard for the entire 40 minutes. ... Things just didn’t go our way.”