CLEVELAND, OH--- The Vikings have officially punched their ticket to Indianapolis with an overtime win against Robert Morris 75-70 after an improbable 4th quarter comeback, overcoming deficit after deficit, power outages, clock outages, you name it. They were lead as always by first year head coach Daniyal Robinson who has now won his 20th game in his first year, the most successful first year head coach in Cleveland State history.
This Horizon League quarterfinal between the #3 seed Cleveland State Vikings and #6 seed Robert Morris Colonials was an absolute thriller. The game started off odd, with a power outage at the Wolstein Center knocking out the game and shot clocks, ending an RMU run at that point, after the clocks were fixed we would see CSU go on a 9-2 run, but still would not be in a lead, the Vikings spent more than 30 minutes behind the Colonials. The Vikings would find a positive way to end the 1st half, ending on a buzzer-beating layup from Spider Johnson.
The second half was all RMU, they were lead by Stephaun Walker who scored 15 points, was 3-3 from the free throw line and made 6 of his 10 field goal attempts, Michael Green III who scored 14 points and was also a perfect 3-3 from the free throw line, and Josh Corbin who scored 14 along with making 4 of his 6 3 point attempts. We would not see the Vikings take a lead until the game was forced to overtime. Even though CSU has the worst free throw percentage in the HL, they would manage to use free throws to battle back into the game and eventually tie it to send us into overtime. The free throws came from Tristan Enaruna, Drew Lowder, and Spider Johnson towards the end of the game. Lowder also made some clutch 3 pointers to close the deficit, especially his 3 pointer with 1:36 left in the 2nd half to make the score 61-57. The most clutch play scoring wise was his free throws with 7 seconds left that tied the game at 61.
Overtime would see the Vikings ride their white hot momentum through out, continuing to see Lowder and Enaruna clutch up with free throws, CSU who as we know usually struggles from the line made 80% of their free throws Thursday night. Enaruna would make 3 of his 5 free throws, Johnson would make 3 of his 4, and Lowder would make 6 of his 7. Enaruna lead the game scoring with 23 points, making 10 of his 17 field goal attempts, Johnson scored 15 and Lowder would score 11.
The Vikings advance to the HL semifinals to play Milwaukee Monday night at 9:30 pm. You can hear the game on Fox Sports 1350 The Gambler, the free iHeartRadio app, or HERE