Sophomore Wes Nordquist scored 22 points and hauled in 14 rebounds to help lead the Buena Vista men's basketball team to a strong 76-68 Iowa Conference road victory at Central College on Wednesday night.
It's the 300th coaching victory in the career of Buena Vista coach Brian VanHaaften.
Nordquist had the hot hand, connecting on 11-of-16 attempts from the field. Seven of his 14 rebounds came on the offensive end. Junior Doug Bissen and sophomore Troy Ticknor each followed with 11 points, while Bissen also posted nine rebounds.
The Beavers started fast jumping out to a 20-5 lead nearly nine minutes in. The Dutch, however, weren't about to let BVU run away with the contest and used a solid 23-6 run over the eight minutes to take their first lead of the contest at 28-26 with 3:30 left in the first half. BVU connected on just 3-of-10 field goal attempts during that run.
Back-to-back buckets by BVU gave the Beavers the lead back at 30-28 before the Dutch tied it at 30-30 heading into halftime.
After shooting less than 40 percent in the opening half, BVU caught fire in the second and made 20-of-40 attempts from the field. The game was back-and-forth at the start before the Dutch took a six-point lead with 12:05 left.
Nordquist helped spark a key run for the Beavers with a bucket off his own offensive rebound, and from there BVU went on an 11-0 run and led 55-50 with less than eight minutes left. The team remained up just four with under two minutes to play, but Nordquist scored the game's next six points to extend the margin to 10 with 1:01 to play and secure the eight-point win.
BVU finished the game shooting 45 percent from the field and made 7-of-9 from the free-throw line. Defensively, it out-rebounded the Dutch, 42-36, and held them to just 40.7 percent shooting.
VanHaaften is now 300-107 in his career, and he reached the milestone in his hometown of Pella.
Buena Vista is now 7-10 overall (4-4 IIAC) and will return to action on Saturday evening when the team hosts Cornell College at 6:00pm. It will also be Alumni Day on campus, and the JV men's team will take on the BVU Alumni at 1:30pm.