“I know it’s a Tuesday night during finals week, but we can’t use that as an excuse,” said Poulin. “This was definitely not one of our better performances. We played the game at Bartlett’s pace and they did a good job of taking us out of our transition game. Fortunately, we did just enough to pull out the win. Sometimes you just have to take that and run with it.”
Jake Ludwig had a game high 15 points for the North Stars, including a bucket in the middle of the late third-quarter run. Prior to that John Davern had given the North Stars the lead 30-28 with a pair of free throws. Tyler DeMoss closed out the run with a transition layup.
“We were trying to force the tempo all night,” said Poulin. “We were finally able to get a little something going at the end third quarter. We pushed the ball up the floor a little better. There weren’t a lot of those moments.”
Bartlett (10-7) could get no closer than three points in the fourth quarter. Ludwig had a basket and a pair of free throws down the stretch to help preserve the win.
“They were very physical on defense and we just weren’t into it mentally,” said Ludwig. “We have to work on that. But we did what we had to do to get the win.”
After a slow start Bartlett showed signs of life at the end of the second quarter to pull ahead 24-23 at the break. Ryan DiCanio had four 3-pointers during a 15-5 run by the Hawks to close out the second quarter.
But DiCanio was held to just two points in the second half and the Hawks as a team shot just 5-of-18 (28 percent) from the field after the break.
“Ultimately when you are playing against a matchup defense like that and you get inside the zone you have to finish shots,” said Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith. “We got the shots we wanted, we just didn’t finish on enough of them.”
DiCanio had 16 points to lead Bartlett.
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