DILLON, Mont. – A good offensive game and plenty of forced turnovers for the University of Providence men's basketball team were overshadowed by an unbelievable shooting night from (16) University of Montana Western in a 100-87 road loss. Western shot 68 percent from the floor and 72 percent from three to set an offensive pace UP just couldn't match.
 
Led by 11 points from junior guard Jack Taylor and a few threes from shooting specialist Jacob Wetzel, the Argos hung right with the Bulldogs in the first half. UP actually led for a majority of the half, pulling ahead by as much as 8 off of 3 straight threes from Taylor who scored all 11 of his first half points in the first four minutes of play.
 
As the Bulldogs keyed on Taylor, Wetzel came off the bench to keep the Argos ahead with 2 threes of his own. It was around that time that Western realized guard Kooper Kidgell was starting to have the kind of night kids dream about in driveway. The junior finished the half a perfect 6-6 from the field.
 
Kidgell and Frontier Conference Preseason Player of the Year, Dom Robinson spurred a comeback that turned the game into a back-and-forth contest for the last five minutes of the half. With under a minute left, it looked like the worst UP would do would be trailing by one score at the half, but Robinson drained a three with five seconds on the clock to put Western ahead 46-40 at the buzzer.
 
That shot changed the energy of the game as the teams headed into the locker room and when they came back out, it was all Western. Kidgell hit 2 3-point shots in the first three minutes to expand the Bulldog lead to 16 points. The Argos never really recovered from that.
 
Taylor and Wetzel weren't much of a factor in the second half. Instead, junior guards DuShaun Rice, Matthew Brooks-McGregor, and Sergio Berkley did their best to try and keep pace with Kidgell and Robinson. The three seniors combined for 32 second half points, accounting for 68 percent of the team's scoring.
 
UP shot a decent 41 percent from the floor and did a good job to get to the charity stripe often where the team made 16 of 18 attempts. On defense, the Argos had 10 steals and forced Western into 18 turnovers.
 
All of that simply wasn't enough to stop the Bulldogs, particularly Robinson who shot 9-12 for 29 points and Kidgell who went 10-10, including 4-4 from three for 27 points.
 
Rice didn't have that kind of shooting night, but his ability to get to the free-throw line made him the team's leading scorer with 20 points. He also led the team with 4 steals and 4 assists. While senior forward Trayvon Bashir only scored 2 points, he grabbed over a third of UP's rebounds, with 12 boards and also had as many assists as Rice.
 
The loss is UP's fifth straight with a record of 7-7 (1-3). Keeping that streak from going to six games will be difficult with a road game against (10) Lewis-Clark State College coming up next on Saturday, January 13.