No Power Outage for AU Guards
January 6, 2005

Complete Box Score

Half of the city of Ashland was without electricty Thursday night (Jan. 6). No generator was needed at Ashland University, however. The juice kept flowing, in large part, thanks to Eagle guards Vahn Knight and Javan Roberson.

Knight, a sophomore, scored a career-high 25 points and Roberson, a junior, scored all 12 of his points in the second half as Ashland (8-7/2-4 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) subdued Northwood (6-5/3-2), 70-61.

Ashland took the lead for good, 53-51 on a pair of Knight free throws with 4:40 to play in regulation. The Eagles outscored the Timberwolves, 17-10 the rest of the game. The victory gives Ashland a 7-1 record at home this season. The improving Eagles have won three of their last four games.

Ashland shot just 39 percent from the floor (23-59), including 28.6 percent (10-35) in the first half, but outrebounded the visitors, 42-33 and hit 21-of-26 free throw attempts (80.8 percent). The Eagles forced 16 turnovers and enjoyed a 17-6 advantage in points off of turnovers. Northwood was in front at halftime, 29-28.

Knight was relentless all night in taking the ball to the ‘Wolves. He put up 20 shots (he made nine) and there are some players who would get a tongue-lashing after doing that. Not Knight. The AU coaching staff has asked him to be more aggressive and be more of a force on offense. The sophomore seems to be buying into that theory. He’s led AU in scoring in four consecutive games and he’s scored over 20 points each of the last two games.

Roberson took over as the point guard a couple of weeks ago. He hasn’t been asked to score, his job description has been to distribute the ball, be a floor general and play solid defense. Against Northwood, he dropped in 4-of-5 field goal attempts and 3-of-4 free throw tries. His night included a pair of steals.

Northwood, as usual, attacked the Eagles with a proficient long-range shooting attack. The Timberwolves came into the game as the GLIAC’s top three-point shooting team. That’s helped them climb to the ninth spot in the NCAA Division II Great Lakes regional rankings.

The ‘Wolves knocked down 8-of-26 trey attempts (30.8 percent) against AU. The majority of NU’s shots were outside jumpers and that meant that the visitors went to the free throw line nine times. Ashland couldn’t pull away because the Eagles were having shooting miseries. From three-point range, AU was 3-of-19 (15.8 percent).

Senior guard D.J. Hughes had 21 points to lead Northwood. Ryan Broker came off the bench to add 12 points.

Ashland received 11 points and a team-high nine rebounds from sophomore forward Greg Emmons. Junior forward Justin Brown, the GLIAC’s leading rebounder at over nine rebounds per game, collected eight missed shots.