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ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Concordia-St. Paul men's basketball team (2-7, 0-5 NSIC) looks to start the New Year the way it finished the 2012 calendar year with road games at Wayne State (6-4, 1-4) on Friday at 8 p.m. at Rice Auditorium followed by a Saturday tip at 6 p.m. against Augustana (8-1, 4-1).
Concordia snapped a 5-game skid in its last action of 2012 with a 76-70 win over Waldorf College in which sophomore
Terez VanPelt (Osseo, Minn.) continued his surge as one of the top point guards in the Northern Sun.
VanPelt put up 22 points and dished out five assists while playing all 40 minutes in the win and has now topped 20 points six times including each of the last two games in which he's averaged 25.0 points and 6.0 assists.
He's among the NSIC's scoring leaders at 20.3 points (3rd) and assists leaders at 4.1 (4th).
He'll get a tough test this weekend as each of Concordia's opponents feature a star senior guard that can score at a similar pace in Wayne State's Amry Shelby and Augustana's Cameron McCaffrey.
On Friday, the Wildcats' Shelby is seventh in the NSIC, scoring 16.7 points per game while connecting on 37-of-40 free throws (92.5%) on the year. He'll likely be defending VanPelt often and is second in the NSIC with 2.1 steals per game. Wayne State looks to snap a 3-game losing streak with a New Year's Eve game today, but is coming off a pair of double-digit road losses at Upper Iowa (56-77) and Winona State (60-74). Its lone conference win was a 2-point win at home over Sioux Falls (55-53).
Saturday's competition features the league's second-leading scorer in McCaffrey at Augustana's Elmen Center. McCaffrey has led the Vikings in scoring every game this season including six games with 20-plus points and three-straight topping 20. He poured in a season-high 36 points in a 70-58 win over crosstown rival Sioux Falls earlier in the year. He's averaging 20.7 points per game and like VanPelt, can dish the ball to open teammates, ranking seventh with 3.6 assists per game.
The Vikings are a perennial NCAA Tournament team, reaching the Big Dance four years in a row and 10 times total in program history and are off to a hot start again at 8-1. Augie's only loss was in its last action of 2012, a 56-70 loss at Winona State before rebounding for a tough 71-64 win at Upper Iowa.
