Whitworth to host Saint John’s, Mary Hardin Baylor for Oakwood Classic
After traveling to Ohio and Colorado to play some of the best Division III teams in the country, the Whitworth men’s basketball team gets to play two high-quality programs at home Tuesday and Wednesday as part of the Whitworth Quality Inn Oakwood Classic.
The four-team event starts with a 4 p.m. tip Tuesday between Linfield and Mary Hardin-Baylor, followed by Whitworth vs. Saint John’s at 6 p.m.
On Wednesday, the two Northwest Conference rivals Whitworth and Linfield will swap opponents, with the Pirates set to play Mary Hardin-Baylor in the second game again at 6 p.m.
All games will be played at the Whitworth Fieldhouse.
Whitworth is off to a 4-4 start overall (including a 1-1 record in NWC games), but three of those defeats have come against teams that currently have just one loss: Mount Union, Carleton and Roanoke.
“I feel like we’re making a lot of progress,” Whitworth coach Damion Jablonski said Monday. “Obviously being 4-4 is not a position Whitworth is used to being in, but … this is always a possibility when you schedule like this. I think our team is coming together and really learning what it takes to get it done at a level that Whitworth’s gotten it done in the past.”
Last spring in the Division III Tournament, Mary Hardin-Baylor hosted the pod in Belton, Texas, that Whitworth played in . Whitworth lost its first game, 77-52, to Trinity, but had the Pirates won they would have faced the Crusaders – who reached the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals last spring – in the second round.
The programs last faced each other in a regular-season game in December 2015 in Las Vegas. Whitworth won that game, 68-58. They also played twice in the 2012-13 season, both times in Spokane. Whitworth won the first, a regular-season game; UMHB won the second, a D-III Tournament game.
This year UMHB is 5-3 and just dropped out of the d3hoops.com Top 25.
Saint John’s (Minnesota) is 7-2 overall and 5-1 in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. It also reached the NCAA Tournament last season. This will be the first matchup between the two men’s basketball programs.
“They’re super talented, have good size and share the ball well,” Jablonski said of the Johnnies. “It’s a great program in a good league.”
Rounding out the field is Linfield (4-4, 1-1 NWC), which won’t play Whitworth this week but will do so twice later this season: Jan. 21 in McMinnville, Oregon, and Feb. 17 in Spokane.
The Pirates are led this year in scoring by senior JT McDermott (14.6 points per game) and junior Jake Holtz (14.1). Senior transfer Michael Smith is averaging 13.8 points per contest and leads the Pirates in 3-point shooting (24 of 45).
Jerry Twenge, a senior who graduated from Mt. Spokane High, is fourth on the team in scoring (10.5) and third in rebounding (5.9).
After these two games, Whitworth will wrap up its nonconference schedule Dec. 31 at home against Muhlenberg (Pennsylvania), which is currently 6-1 overall.