GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — They understood the assignment: Defeat Western Colorado and get another home game.
The young Colorado Mesa men's basketball team wasted no time in passing the assignment Saturday, racing to a double-digit lead in the first 10 minutes and never looking back in a 71-49 victory.
"I think what drove that was, it's Chris' (Speller) last regular-season game, so there was an emotional attachment to wanting to do well," CMU coach Mike Dunlap said. "The other part of it was that our execution offensively has been improving, so it was a game that allowed us to get ready for the playoffs on Tuesday night."
The reward is the No. 3 seed in next week's RMAC Tournament and a home game against rival Fort Lewis College. The men's team will tip off at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday after the women host New Mexico Highlands in its quarterfinal game.
After honoring their lone senior, Christopher Speller, the Mavericks went right to work. As a special bonus, Kyle Speller, the public address announcer for the Denver Nuggets, was on the mic announcing his son's final regular-season home game.
"It was extremely fun," Christopher said of hearing his dad's booming voice. "I mean, there's nothing like that moment, so I got to enjoy it and (I'll) cherish that moment for the rest of my life."
Speller finished with seven points, three assists, two steals and five rebounds, one of which led to the dagger 3-pointer of the game in the second half. A missed layup with just more than 10 minutes to play was batted around and Speller chased it down on the sideline in front of CMU's bench. He flipped a pass to Ty Allred, who buried the 3 from the top of the key to put CMU up 55-38.
Winning 50-50 balls and scrapping for offensive rebounds — the Mavs had 13 on Saturday — has become their identity.
"I feel like that's what we play for, the 50-50 balls," Speller said. "We're out there to compete and it just shows how much we want to win."
A 9-0 run in the first quarter helped CMU (19-9, 13-7 RMAC) to build a 32-23 halftime lead, scoring inside and out.
Yaak Yaak had a career-high 20 points, with nine rebounds, two assists and one block before fouling out. Allred had 15 points, a half-dozen rebounds, three assists and two blocks and Will Mortimore scored 11.
The inside game of Yaak, Mortimore, Allred and Emilek Jallow helped the Mavericks outscore Western (8-19, 6-14) 38-22 in the paint, Allred knocked down three of CMU's four 3-pointers and the Mavericks shot an even 50 percent from the field.
Defensively, the Mavericks held Western to 35 percent shooting.
After the first two minutes of the second half, the closest the Mountaineers got was 12 points, 50-38, with 11:53 remaining. Allred responded with a tip-in off a missed shot, then hit a 3-pointer after an offensive rebound by Harvey White to push the lead to 17, 55-38.
Yaak scored 11 points in the first half and was a monster inside, using his height advantage to tip in second-chance opportunities or keep the ball alive. His final bucket came on a layup off a pass from Allred with just more than six minutes to play, putting the Mavs up 21, 62-41.
"I mean, it's a brand-new team, brand-new staff, we never played with each other before, so later down the stretch, we knew we would gel more off the court," Yaak said of the Mavs' steady improvement. "It's the best team I've been a part of, chemistry-wise. So it was just is going to take a while to show that on the court. And we've shown that, you know, the back end of the season. I think 16 of 19 (wins), so it's been good."
Dunlap wasn't sure what this team would become when he was putting it together late last spring and into the summer after he was hired. He did know, though, he had good, coachable players.
"There's been no greed, there's been no jealousy internally," Dunlap said. "I haven't had to deal with any of that, and a lot of times in this day and age, it's such a 'me' generation that it's really hard to build that bridge to 'we.' And you can do it, but our culture right from jump street was these guys are very unselfish.
"Yeah, I'm surprised (19 wins) happened, quite frankly, in the form that it happened. It's very rare that you can assemble a team … we got the job late, and then a fair amount of guys justifiably wanted to go somewhere else, but we had to put basically a whole new team together."
Riding a six-game winning streak and winning 16 of its past 19, the Mavericks are ready for tournament play, especially on their home floor.
"I think that people have seen in the last month the improvement in the team," Dunlap said. "So it's not an emotional statement, it's factual, and you point to the wins and losses, we've learned how to win on the road. We certainly have become comfortable with a very vociferous crowd here that has high expectations. They've been nurtured on winning, so it took awhile for our freshmen to understand that there's an expectation here and it's OK, it's great. It's why we want to play before a crowd like that, that turns out, our band is great, so that momentum is part and parcel to an expectation and I think our guys have embraced it factually."
