Northwestern University Athletics
Northwestern
Oakland
NU Men's Basketball Falls To Oakland, 60-41
1/2/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 2, 2000
EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) - Brad Buddenborg scored 19 points and Oakland snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 60-41 win over Northwestern on Sunday.
Jason Rozycki added 15 for Oakland (3-11), which played without leading scorer Dan Champagne, who broke his right hand in the Grizzlies' last win, a 78-65 victory over Southern Utah on Dec. 4.
Ben Johnson scored 15 points to lead the Wildcats (4-7), which suffered from cold shooting through the first half and fell too far behind. Steve Lepore, Northwestern's leading scorer coming into the game, was held scoreless on 0-for-5 shooting from the floor.
Oakland built a 20-3 lead in the opening 11:39 of the game as the Wildcats missed 18 of their first 19 shots. Tavaras Hardy split a pair of free throws with 8:07 left in the first half to cut the lead to 16. But Sebastien Bellin scored inside 30 seconds later to give Oakland its biggest lead of the game to that point at 22-4.
The Wildcats missed 11 straight shots during one stretch as the Grizzlies extended the lead to as much as 23.
Johnson sank a 3-pointer from the corner with 2:19 remaining in the first half to trim Oakland's lead to 20 at 33-13. But Myke Thom scored on a rebound putback with 38 seconds left to give the Grizzlies a 35-13 halftime lead.
The Wildcats made just 4-of-23 shots from the floor (17 percent) and 3-of-8 shots from the free-throw line (38 percent) in the first half.
