GALESBURG, Illinois—The Knox College Prairie Fire men's basketball team fell to the Grinnell Pioneers by a score of 126-87 today. Knox struggled to handle Grinnell's unique tempo and play style.
The Prairie Fire used their defense to keep it close early in the first half, forcing the Pioneers to try to convert bad looks from beyond the arc. After five minutes, though, Grinnell adjusted, and began raining down the threes as they are wont to do. Knox's defense played very admirably all the same, holding Grinnell to just 37.9% shooting from the field and only allowing them to convert one third of their threes. On the offensive end, the Prairie Fire heavily utilized the skills of Justin Windt, who scored 28 of Knox's 42 first half points and also grabbed six rebounds. Even though the Prairie Fire shot an excellent 63.3% from the field in the first half, they did so without attempting any threes, and this combined with Grinnell's persistence with three pointers resulted in Knox going into the half with a deficit of 18.
The second half did not fare much better for the Prairie Fire, as Grinnell continued to rain down shots from beyond the arc. Jordan Rayner took over for Knox in the second half, as he shot a perfect 6-for-6, including one three, for 13 points. Raynor also harassed the Pioneers guards, saving Knox several baskets. To combat the blistering pace that Grinnell played at, the Prairie Fire utilized a larger bench than normal. Unfortunately, Grinnell's depth proved to be too much for Knox to handle, and despite no player for Grinnell playing more than 10 minutes, their offense still dropped 66 points. This led to a comfortable victory for the Pioneers.
"Turnovers and rebounding have been our Achilles heal all year and today was another game where we gave up too many extra possessions," said head coach Kevin Walden. "Second chance points and points off turnovers really hurt us. We had some pretty good individual performances and many players improved their game from the first time we played them."
Knox searches for their first conference win this Friday at home against Beloit College at 7:30 p.m.
