Ferris wins three straight, heads into con­fer­ence matchup vs. Findlay

Leaps and Bounds: The men’s bas­ket­ball team climbed to the top on Saturday, tri­umph­ing over the Tiffin Dragons with a score of 82–61. That vic­tory brought the Bulldogs to a record of 3–0, the best start they have had in 12 years. Photo By: Kate Dupon | Photographer

After the strong home stand, Ferris now stands at 3–3 over­all in the sea­son fol­low­ing two home vic­to­ries against Ashland and Tiffin over the weekend.

Ferris car­ried a post-win hang­over into the Ashland game and the team got off to a slow start. The Eagles came out shoot­ing 53.6 per­cent in the first half to take a 37–30 lead into halftime.

Halftime proved to be a wake-up call for the Bulldogs, as the team came out fir­ing. Ferris went on a 26–8 run in the first nine min­utes of the half and shot 64.5 per­cent from the field in the sec­ond half.

The Bulldogs also played strong on defense in the sec­ond half, where the team forced 12 turnovers. The strong play on both sides of the ball allowed Ferris to pull away for an 82–72 victory.

Junior forward/center Justin Keenan led the way for Ferris with a game high 21 points, while senior guard Austin Randel posted 16 points along with four steals. Junior guard Darien Gay chipped in a double-double with 12 points and 10 assists. Continue Reading…

Ferris adds three for­wards to 2010–2011 recruit­ing class

The Bulldog hockey team added three signees to the 2010–2011 recruit­ing class.

Ferris inked three for­wards dur­ing November’s early sign­ing period, giv­ing the Bulldogs a quick start in the recruit­ing process. The Bulldogs focused on recruit­ing for­wards since sev­eral seniors at the posi­tion will be grad­u­at­ing this year.

One of the top signees is Andy Huff, a native of Howell, who is cur­rently play­ing for the Traverse City North Stars of the North American Hockey League (NAHL).

Huff was a high-profile recruit, hav­ing his name on the NHL’s watch­list for the 2010 entry draft. Huff is also tied for 12^th among the NAHL’s lead­ing point scor­ers and is the 11^th lead­ing scorer among for­wards in the league.

Joining Huff will be fel­low NAHL for­ward Justin DeMartino, who is cur­rently a mem­ber of the Springfield (Ill.) Jr. Blues. DeMartino comes to the Ferris pro­gram with a strong back­ground, as he posted a team-best tying 84 points while play­ing for the Detroit Little Caesars last sea­son. DeMartino was also part of the Little Caesars Midget Minor team that won the 2008 USA Hockey Under-16 National Championship.

Rounding out the recent signees is Cory Kane, who is play­ing for the Vernon (British Columbia) Vipers of the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL). Kane is cur­rently ranked at 27 on the BCHL’s scor­ing lead­ers chart for the 2009–2010 sea­son. Kane put up 54 over­all points along with 24 goals and 30 assist in the 2008–2009 season.

The women’s bas­ket­ball team dropped its con­fer­ence opener to Grand Valley

Making a Pass: Junior Tiara Adams (#44) gears up for a pass in the recent game against Lewis. Throughout the game, Adams scored 13 points and had three steals and 3 assists. The Bulldogs walked away with a 74–66 vic­tory. Photo By: Kristyn Sonnenberg | Photo Editor

Ferris started off the home sched­ule with a 74–66 win over the Lewis Flyers on Nov. 24.

Ferris jumped out to a five point lead early in the first half and took a 30–25 lead into the half on 54.2% shoot­ing from the field.

After hold­ing the lead for the begin­ning of the sec­ond half, the Flyers bat­tled back to force a 50–50 tie with 7:42 left to play. The Bulldogs proved to be too much as they went on 24–16 run at the end to seal the victory.

Leading the way for Ferris was junior guard Becci Houdek, who dropped in 14 points and six assists. Sophomore guard Lindsey Pettit put up 13 points and junior for­ward Amy Joostberns added 12 points and six rebounds. Pettit said the team was deter­mined to start the home sched­ule on a pos­i­tive note. Continue Reading…

The Bulldogs posted two shootout vic­to­ries over No. 1 Miami (Ohio)

Griggs: Junior Zach Redmond crosses the ice in Miami this week­end. Redmond earned his sev­enth assist of the sea­son on Friday after inter­cept­ing the puck from Miami’s top-ranked team and pass­ing it to team­mate Blair Riley, who scored his sev­enth goal of the sea­son. Photo Courtesy of Miami Student Newspaper Photographer, Michael

Ferris improved to 7−3−2 over­all this sea­son and 2−2−2−2 in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) after earn­ing four points in the con­fer­ence stand­ings. Head coach Bob Daniels believes the team is improved, but must con­tinue to work on a few areas.

“After this week­end, I think we have a chance to be a very good team,” said Daniels. “But we have to con­tinue to work hard if we’re going to get there.” Continue Reading…

The Bulldogs are 0–2 to start the 2009–2010 season

Reach for the Sky: Senior Austin Randel pol­ishes up his slam dunk style at prac­tice. The sea­son open­ing game took place this Sunday in Illinois, end­ing with a close 65–60 loss to the Lewis Flyers. Photo By: Kate Dupon | Photographer

Ferris started off the week with a 65–60 loss to the Lewis Flyers in a season-opening road con­test on Sunday night.

The Bulldogs and Flyers traded bas­kets in a back-and-forth first half, which included eight lead changes. Neither team could hold an advan­tage for very long, despite a 15-point first half by senior guard Austin Randel. The Flyers man­aged to grab a 32–30 lead at halftime.

In the sec­ond half, Ferris held tight with the Flyers and bat­tled to a three-point lead with 5:42 left in the con­test. The Flyers responded with an 8–0 run to take a 55–50 lead with just 3:43 left on the clock. Continue Reading…

The team enters the GLIAC Tournament as wildcard

The Ferris State vol­ley­ball team split its final home matches of the season.

The Bulldogs began the week­end action on Friday, in which they dropped a close 3–2 deci­sion to the Michigan Tech Huskies. Ferris split the first four sets with the Huskies, but was unable to close out the match, los­ing the final set 15–11.

On the offen­sive side, junior out­side hit­ter Arielle Goodson led the way with a match-high 20 kills. Senior mid­dle hit­ter Kristy Gilchrist chipped in 12 kills and red­shirt fresh­man set­ter Samantha Fordyce posted a match-high 51 assists.

For the Ferris defense, sopho­more out­side hit­ter Ashley Huntey paced the team with 12 digs and sopho­more libero Lisa Tobiczyk chipped in with 11 digs.

The loss against Michigan Tech marked the fourth loss in five matches for the Bulldogs.

After drop­ping the first match of the week­end, the team bounced back and closed out the reg­u­lar sea­son with a 3–1 vic­tory over Northern Michigan on Saturday. Goodson was con­fi­dent the team would bounce back.

“We knew that we’d have to show our men­tal tough­ness after the first loss,” said Goodson. “We knew we had another big game going against Northern Michigan.”

The match started with a spe­cial cer­e­mony to honor the four seniors on the team: Gilchrist, Katie Edwards, Amanda Kettlewell and Sarah Lark.

Ferris was able to jump out to an early lead in the con­test, as the team won the first two sets 25–20 and 25–22. Northern Michigan took the third set 30–28, but Ferris closed out the Wildcats with a deci­sive 25–17 fourth set vic­tory to win the last home match of the sea­son. Ferris dom­i­nated the hit­ting per­cent­age in the fourth set with a .276 mark, while the Wildcats had only a .077 hit­ting percentage.

Gilchrist and Goodson led the offen­sive attack again as Gilchrist tal­lied a match-high 17 kills, while Goodson posted 14 kills. Lark, a co-captain, also con­tributed nine kills.

The Bulldogs had three play­ers with double-digit digs, with Tobiczyk tal­ly­ing a match-leading 16 digs, junior libero Whitney Rupp adding 14 and Huntey putting in 12. Ferris held a 62–49 advan­tage in digs dur­ing the match.

The Bulldogs fin­ished the reg­u­lar sea­son with a 19–10 over­all record and a 10–6 record in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics Association (GLIAC).
Ferris now heads into the GLIAC Tournament, where the team is a wild­card fol­low­ing a fourth place tie with Northern Michigan in the GLIAC North Division stand­ings. The team has a great deal of morale head­ing into the tournament.

“Our con­fi­dence level is really high going into the tour­na­ment,” said Goodson. “That final win solid­i­fied the con­fi­dence we have in each other and really showed the trust we have for one another.”

The Bulldogs will face off against the Hillsdale Chargers in the first round. Hillsdale is the num­ber one seed in the tour­na­ment after win­ning the GLIAC South Division with a 12–4 con­fer­ence record and a 20–7 over­all record.

In their only match this sea­son, the Bulldogs defeated the Chargers 3–1 at Hillsdale on Oct. 3. The open­ing round con­test will take place today at Jesse Philips Arena in Hillsdale at 7 p.m.

Ferris hangs tough with nation­ally ranked Division I Dayton

Exhibition Game: Junior Justin Keenan (#40) runs for the net in the Bulldogs’ exhi­bi­tion game against the Dayton Flyers. The Ferris team fought it out and ended up with a 88–73 loss against the nationally-ranked team. Photo Courtesy of Ferris State Athletics

Ferris held strong against Dayton, which is cur­rently ranked 22^nd in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, but ulti­mately fell 88–73 in an exhi­bi­tion match on Nov. 3.

Despite the loss, head coach Bill Sall was happy with the per­for­mance from his team.

“I thought we improved a lot from the first exhi­bi­tion game,” said Sall. “We have the mak­ings of a good team, but we have some things to work on.”

The Bulldogs jumped out to an early 9–6 lead in the first half, but Dayton responded with an unan­swered 14 point scor­ing drive. The Flyers con­tin­ued their strong play in the first period and took a 48–35 advan­tage into halftime.

Dayton began the sec­ond half with another scor­ing run to give the Flyers an 18-point lead, which was the biggest lead of the night.

Following the run, the Bulldogs outscored the Flyers 16–5 to close the gap to 10 points with 12 min­utes left in the game. Ferris would not get any closer, how­ever, as Dayton held on down the stretch for the victory.

Among the lead­ers for the Bulldogs was junior forward/center Justin Keenan who led the way with a game-high 25 points. Senior guard Austin Randel dropped in 22 points and junior guard Darien Gay con­tributed 10 points. Keenan is a pre­sea­son NCAA Division II All-American.

“Keenan played very well for us and I think he was the best player on the court,” said Sall. “It really says some­thing con­sid­er­ing the level of com­pe­ti­tion we were going against.”

After the matchup with Dayton, the Bulldogs head into their final exhi­bi­tion game at Calvin College look­ing to be fully pre­pared for the reg­u­lar season.

The team will have to over­come the injury bug early in the sea­son, as sopho­more guard Dontae Molden suf­fered an injury just five min­utes into the Dayton game. Sall said he is a lit­tle con­cerned with the injury since the depth at point guard has been affected.

Despite the early-season injury con­cerns, Keenan feels con­fi­dent going into the final exhi­bi­tion game.

“We are really con­fi­dent at this point,” said Keenan. “Most of us have been here for awhile and we feel like we’ve really started run­ning on all cylinders.”

The con­test against Calvin, which is coach Sall’s alma mater, will take place on Nov. 15 at Van Noord Arena in Grand Rapids.

Hillsdale racks up 59 points on Ferris in lop­sided victory

Still Fighting: Damien Miller (#80) and Jake Hancock (#62) keep up the hus­tle at Saturday’s “Hall of Fame Game/Senior Day”. Despite the effort, the Bulldogs ended up with a 59–14 loss against the Hillsdale Chargers. Photo By: Kristyn Sonnenberg | Photo Editor

Ferris con­tin­ued its dubi­ous streak with a 59–14 blowout loss to the No. 22 ranked Hillsdale Chargers in the home finale on Saturday. The Bulldogs had not allowed 59 points in a game since giv­ing up 63 to Grand Valley State in 2001.

Hillsdale jumped on the Bulldogs early in the con­test as it raced out to a 14–0 lead in the first quar­ter. Joe Glendening returned a blocked punt for one of the scores.

The Chargers con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate Ferris in the sec­ond quar­ter, where they added 17 points on two touch­down runs and a field goal for a 31–0 lead at the half.

The Bulldogs con­tin­ued their strug­gles in the sec­ond half as they allowed three touch­downs in the third quar­ter to give Hillsdale a 52–0 advantage.

Ferris was finally able to get on the board early in the fourth quar­ter as fresh­man Robert Banaszak con­nected with sopho­more Mike Ryan on a 16-yard touch­down pass. Hillsdale responded with a 73-yard drive, which ended with an 18-yard touch­down recep­tion by Jesse Norris.

The Bulldogs added a sec­ond score late in the quar­ter on a 27-yard touch­down run by fresh­man Tyler Thomas. The offen­sive spark came too late in the game and Hillsdale ran out the clock.

Most of the prob­lems for Ferris came on the offen­sive side of the ball, as the team was only able to pro­duce 151 yards of offense. Ferris had just 38 yards from the rush­ing attack in the con­test. The Bulldogs also had three turnovers in the game, two of which resulted in touch­downs. Head coach Jeff Pierce acknowl­edged the trou­bles his team has had on offense.

“Obviously things are not going good right now on offense,” said Pierce. “We’ve had to adjust to switch­ing to a new offense and find­ing how peo­ple fit into the offense, but I think the guys are start­ing to get some­what com­fort­able with it.”

The Bulldogs had their strug­gles on the defen­sive side of the ball as well, as the team gave up 377 yards of total defense. The Bulldogs espe­cially had trou­ble stop­ping the run, as Hillsdale racked up 166 rush­ing yards.

“We just didn’t match up when it came to the line of scrim­mage,” said Pierce. “They kept us from mov­ing the ball and we couldn’t stop them from mov­ing the ball on us.”

Following the loss, the Bulldogs are 1–9 over­all and 0–9 in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Ferris has scored just 58 points over the past eight games combined.

The team will travel to University Center, Mich. on Nov. 7 to play Saginaw Valley State University in the final game of the season.

The Bulldogs were swept at Alaska in first con­fer­ence series

Alaskan Ice: The hockey team trekked up to Alaska for this weekend’s game against the Nanooks. Pictured here, Scott Wietecha (#3) tries to keep a Nanook in check. Alaska pulled off a 3–2 vic­tory in overtime.Photo Courtesy of Tom Hewitt, Editor-in-Chief, UAF Sun Star

Ferris fell to the nation­ally ranked University of Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks in two games this week­end, end­ing the team’s four-game winning.

Ferris opened the week­end with a 3–1 loss on Friday. The Bulldogs got on the board early in the first period as senior Blair Riley knocked the puck in off a rebound in front of the net.

Alaska responded late in the first period on a power-play goal by Nik Yaremchuk with just 1.1 sec­onds left in the period.

Freshman Eric Alexander had a five-minute major penalty that ulti­mately cost the team. Alaska took advan­tage of the penalty as Aaron Gens scored on sopho­more goal­tender Taylor Nelson to take a 2–1 lead. Alaska added an empty net goal in the third period to seal the victory.

Alaska was 4–10 on power play oppor­tu­ni­ties in the two games. Reducing penalty min­utes is some­thing head coach Bob Daniels knows the team will have to address.

“Our penalty kill has been pretty good so far this sea­son,” said Daniels. “But we really strug­gled at times dur­ing this week­end and we plan on giv­ing it a lot of atten­tion this week in practice.”

Nelson saved 27 of 29 shots for the Bulldogs. Ferris was out­shot in the game, 30–26, for the first time all season.

Alaska com­pleted the sweep on Saturday with a 3–2 over­time vic­tory. The Nanooks scored first late in the first period when Andy Taranto net­ted a power-play goal with 2:28 remain­ing in the period.

The Bulldogs responded with a power-play goal of their own, as senior Aaron Lewicki scored his fourth goal of the sea­son with 39 sec­onds left in the first period. Each team scored in the sec­ond period for a 2–2 tie after two peri­ods. A score­less third period led to overtime.

During the over­time period, both teams bat­tled to a stale­mate for a major­ity of the period. With 15.6 sec­onds left in over­time, Alaska cap­i­tal­ized on a turnover in the Ferris zone and scored the game-winner.

“I feel that we could have won either game this week­end,” said Daniels. “As long as we can keep play­ing like we did this week­end, we will win our fair share of games.”

Junior goal­tender Pat Nagle saved 31 shots for the Bulldogs in the loss. The Bulldogs were 2–10 on their power play oppor­tu­ni­ties in the two games.
Ferris stands at 5−3−0 over­all on the sea­son and are now 0−2−0 in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA). The Bulldogs host the Bowling Green State University Falcons this week­end in a con­fer­ence match-up. The Falcons are 0−5−1 over­all this season.

The women’s bas­ket­ball team looks to adjust to a young lineup

Women’s Basketball: The Bulldogs got down to busi­ness last week at prac­tice to work toward the estab­lish­ment of an entirely new start­ing lineup. The team is start­ing up the year minus four of last year’s seniors and plus five incom­ing fresh­man. Photo by Brandon Martinez | Web Editor

The Bulldogs have to replace the entire start­ing lineup from a sea­son ago. The team lost four seniors, includ­ing sec­ond team All-GLIAC guard Teghan Thelen.

Putting together an entirely new start­ing lineup is some­thing head coach Tracey Dorow will have to adjust to.

“It’s always some­thing you have to adjust to when you grad­u­ate play­ers, espe­cially a whole lineup,” said Dorow. “At the same time, it’s really excit­ing because we have a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to sur­prise peo­ple since we’re some­what of an unknown in the league.”

With such a young team, which has five fresh­men on the ros­ter, the Bulldogs will look to some of its vet­eran play­ers for leadership.

One of the return­ing vet­er­ans the team will rely on this year is senior cen­ter Andrea Clancy, who earned the Sixth Player Award last season.

“Andrea has really stepped up into a lead­er­ship role and we needed her to,” said Dorow. “She knew that we were los­ing our vet­eran lead­ers and I’m pleased to see her step up and be a leader.”

Another vet­eran coach Dorow will look to lead is junior guard Becci Houdek. Dorow said Houdek is a leader on the court and has a knack for the game.

Even with hav­ing such a young team, Ferris is not con­cerned about the lack of expe­ri­ence of the younger players.

“We’re a young team, but the fresh­men are get­ting there,” said Clancy.

Houdek said she is not wor­ried about hav­ing a young team because peo­ple with expe­ri­ence have stepped up and have helped the younger play­ers on the team.

The Bulldogs fin­ished the 2008–2009 sea­son with a 13–15 record over­all, but won seven of the final nine games of the sea­son. Getting off to a fast start this year is some­thing the team believes will be cru­cial to the season.

“It’s really impor­tant for us to start out strong early in the sea­son,” said Clancy. “We had some issues to start last sea­son, but that’s not going to hap­pen this season.”

Ferris fin­ished third in the GLIAC North divi­sion last sea­son and made it to the semi­fi­nals of the GLIAC tour­na­ment. The Bulldogs have high expec­ta­tions for them­selves for this year.

“We’re a lot more bal­anced over­all this year and the team chem­istry has really improved from last year,” said Houdek. “We don’t care who does the scor­ing and we don’t care how it’s going to get done. We’re focused on just mak­ing it happen.”

The main goal for the team this sea­son is to get to the regional round of the NCAA Division II Tournament, accord­ing to Houdek.

Ferris will start the sea­son with an exhi­bi­tion con­test against Oakland University on Nov. 1 and will begin reg­u­lar sea­son play Nov. 20 against Gannon University (Pa.).