Willemsen shoots Whitworth past Pacific
As quickly as Pacific shot its way back into contention Friday night, Whitworth’s Colin Willemsen shot the Boxers out of it.
Willemsen came off the bench to spark a game-changing spurt in the second half, and the Pirates remained undefeated with a 62-57 victory over Pacific in both teams’ Northwest Conference men’s basketball openers at the Whitworth Fieldhouse.
Ranked 18th nationally, the Pirates won their seventh straight game to open the season. The Boxers fell to 1-4.
A 6-foot-5 junior transfer from Diablo Valley College in California, Willemsen scored the first eight points of a 10-0 run that turned a tie game into a 51-41 lead with 9 minutes left in the contest. Willemsen also buried a pair of free throws in the final minute to help seal the outcome.
“He’s one of the most highly recruited players we’ve ever had here in terms of (colleges) we were recruiting against,” Whitworth coach Jim Hayford said. “Colin plays with basketball intelligence. He executes and sees what needs to be done, and he plays multiple positions.”
Willemsen, who finished with 14 points and six rebounds, is one of several junior college transfers Hayford successfully recruited during the off-season.
Another of those transfers, Ryan Symes, also scored 14 points.
Willemsen said he felt at home soon after stepping on the campus for the first time during the recruitment process.
“It seemed like this was the ideal place for me,” he said. “Plus, the guys on this team are so awesome. They’re the nicest guys. When I got here, I knew this was the place to be.”
The Pirates led 29-18 with 6 ½ minutes left in the first half before Pacific rallied to close within 33-31 at intermission.
The teams swapped the lead for 8 minutes in the second half until Willemsen took over. He sandwiched a pair of 3-pointers around a layin to push Whitworth’s lead to 49-41. Symes capped the 10-point run with two free throws with 8:58 remaining.
“We have so many 3-point shooters, I really haven’t been called on to shoot many 3s,” said Willemsen, who was 0 for 1 beyond the arc through the Pirates’ first six games.
The Pirates didn’t convert a field goal after James Jones’ three-point conversion with 4:48 left, but their effort to hang on to the lead was made easier by Pacific’s woes at the foul line. The Boxers missed the front end of two 1-and-1 attempts in the last 3 minutes.
Before the game, Pirates senior Jon Young was presented with a commemorative basketball celebrating his 1,000-plus points scored during his Whitworth career.