Injection of energy, excitement pushes Hawks to rout of Tigers

QUINCY — Every aspect of the Illinois State University men’s basketball team’s pregame routine Tuesday screamed energy and excitement.

The Quincy University players and coaches took note.

“They came out in warm-ups and their pre-game shoot was unbelievable,” Hawks coach Ryan Hellenthal said of the Redbirds’ approach to the exhibition game at Redbird Arena. “And I saw where (Illinois State coach Dan Muller) mentioned that and he was so proud of his guys’ mindset.

“So after the game, we talked about it and said let’s learn from this and that’s got to be our mindset (Wednesday) night. Credit to our guys, they executed that vision for what we had to do.”

Iowa Wesleyan had no answer for that.

Bouncy, pesky and in attack mode from the start, the Hawks buried the Tigers with a 16-2 run over the opening six minutes and never let up. A 28-point halftime ballooned as big as 49 points in the second half of a 99-51 victory Wednesday night at Pepsi Arena.

“The key to our success was our energy,” sophomore forward Solomon Gustafson said. “(Tuesday), I felt like we had no energy at all. Today, we really wanted to have fun. We don’t do that enough. We had fun. We had a ton of energy. We were talking to each other a lot more. It just felt way more smooth.”

Ratcheting up the intensity started long before the 7:30 p.m. tip clearly helped.

“In our shootaround today, we were really confident,” sophomore guard Nate Shockey said. “We had to feel that energy in warm-ups. We all knew we were going to play together and move the ball.”

It resulted in 15 assists against just six turnovers and 59.1 percent shooting from the field. Better yet, only five of the Hawks’ 39 field goals were 3-pointers and they scored 52 points in the paint as the aggressive defense created 16 turnovers and 23 points off turnovers.

The Hawks (5-4) also held the Tigers scoreless for the game’s first four minutes. 

“We wanted to get back to playing with confidence,” Shockey said. “We did that. I thought we came out from the jump and stepped on them right away.”

Junior guard Jalen Stamps came off the bench to score a game-high 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting. Junior forward Malik Hardmon scored 17 points in 11 minutes in his return from COVID protocols which forced him to miss the last three games. Shockey added 11 points, and Gustafson had seven points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots.

“This was just the first step to that process,” Shockey said.

The goal is to carry a three-game winning streak into the Christmas break. The Hawks will have the opportunity to do that this weekend when they play host to the Hansen-Spear Funeral Home Classic at Pepsi Arena. Quincy plays East-West University at 3 p.m. Saturday and Davenport at 3 p.m. Sunday.

“I don’t know that I felt as much energy this season as I did today,” Gustafson said. “If we’re doing this the next two games, I feel like we’re going 3-0 into Christmas and getting right back to it after break.

“We put ourselves in a good position tonight. It didn’t matter who we were playing. Our energy was incredible.”