The Pioneer men's basketball team fell 90-80 (box score) to the
Linfield Wildcats Saturday night in McMinnville. The Pioneers end
the season in a four-way tie for third place, but will not make the
playoffs. Tyson Papenfuss scored 17 points to lead the Pioneers.
The Linfield Wildcats never trailed in the game. They jumped out
to an early 8-2 lead, extending it out to 12, 29-17, with just over
five minutes left in the first half. The Pioneers were ice-cold
from long range, hitting just 2 of 14 three-point shots in the
first half, going into the break trailing 38-26.
Linfield opened up the second half on a 10-1 run, taking a
53-32 lead with 17 minutes remaining in the game, the Wildcat's
largest lead of the game. With under ten minutes remaining, the
Pioneers turned up the pressure on the Wildcats, chipping away at
the lead. The Pioneers got the deficit down to single digits, 78-
70, after a pair of freethrows by Gene Rivera (senior, Kahului,
Hawaii) with 2:19 left in the game. Linfield got the lead back up
to 13, with the Pioneers cutting it back down to eight, but there
just wasn't enough time left in the game for the Pioneers to
complete their comeback, falling 90-80.
Tyson Papenfuss (junior, Clackamas, Ore.) led the Pioneers with
17 points. Joey Toboni (senior, San Francisco, Calif.) scored 11
points with seven rebounds.
With the victory, the Linfield Wildcats posted a perfect home
record for the 2007-08 season and worked their way into being part
of the four-way tie for fourth place.
The Pioneers squandered their opportunity to earn a post-season
bid. The Pioneers came into the game needing a victory along with a
loss by Willamette to make the post season. The Bearcats lost in
double overtime at Puget Sound, giving the Pioneers the help they
needed, but the Pioneers couldn't come back against the Wildcats to
secure the victory.
Four teams all tied for third place with a 9-7 record, but only
one of the teams earned a spot in the post season. The tiebreaker
used to determine who got the berth was the head-to-head results
between the four teams. Willamette was 4-2 against those teams,
Linfield and Lewis & Clark were 3-3 and Pacific 2-4, giving
Willamette the playoff spot via the tiebreaker. Puget Sound was the
#2 seed with Whitworth earning the #1 seed and the first-round bye
for the second straight season.
The Pioneers finish the season with a 15-9 overall mark.
