Men's Basketball 11/17/07 -- Concordia-Nebraska 82, Augsburg 75
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PORTLAND, Ore. (11/17/07) -- Femi Solaja (SR, Cottage Grove, Minn./St. Paul Harding HS) collected his fifth double-double in his last seven games for Augsburg College, but it wasn't enough for the Auggies to pick up their first win of the season, as Augsburg fell 82-75 to Concordia University-Seward (Neb.) in the third-place game of the Pacific Northwest Lutheran Tournament on Saturday at Concordia University-Portland (Ore.).
Benjamin Buhr scored 26 points with seven rebounds, while Scott Hannon had 19 points and Casey Schrader had 13 points for the Bulldogs, an NAIA squad now 4-3 on the season. Brandon Schmidt had nine points, and Tyler Bredehoeft had eight points with five assists.
Solaja scored 32 points -- a scoring high in his 27 games in an Augsburg uniform -- to go along with 12 points for his double-double, adding three steals, a blocked shot and two assists for the Auggies, now 0-2 on the season. Solaja was named to the five-player All-Tournament Team for the event. Jon Cassens (SO, Prior Lake, Minn.) scored 12 points with five assists and two steals, and David Olson (JR, Lindstrom, Minn./Chisago Lakes HS) had 10 points with three assists off the bench.
"Femi had a great night," said Augsburg head coach Aaron Griess. "He was feeling good tonight and he's really tough to stop. He also made some nice passes out of double-teams late in the game."
For the second straight night, Augsburg was hampered by a cold outside-shooting performance. The Auggies hit just 1-of-15 from three-point range (6.7 percent), despite hitting 56.1 percent (32-of-57) from the field.
"Our shooting woes continued tonight, which was disappointing," Griess said. "For whatever reason, we just weren't comfortable shooting the ball this weekend. Had we connected on even a few of those open looks, I think we would have seen two different results. In any case, we need to be able to make defensive stops to win and we weren't able to do that in these games."
Neither team led by more than eight points in the game, which featured 10 lead changes and nine ties. The Auggies led 72-68 with 3:25 left in the second half, but Concordia used a 9-0 run to take the lead for good at 77-72 with 47 seconds left. Over the final 3:25, the Bulldogs hit 9-of-10 from the free-throw line -- part of a 22-of-23 effort from the charity stripe in the game. Augsburg hit 10-of-15 from the free-throw line in the game.
"We're disappointed in the loss tonight, but we took some positive steps," Griess said. "We competed a lot better and made more plays offensively down the stretch. Concordia was really good from long-range tonight and they only missed one free throw for the game. It came down to who was going to make a defensive stop, and we had a short shot rim out inside of two minutes."
Darren Nelson * (JR, Richfield, Minn.) scored eight points for the Auggies, while Nate Alm (JR, Eden Prairie, Minn.) had six points with three rebounds.
Augsburg returns to Minnesota for a nonconference contest on Tuesday (11/20) at 7:30 at Northwestern College-Roseville.
