It had been 21 days since the Spartans’ men’s basketball team had played their last game. An 86-63 defeat to Prairie State Pioneers on Tuesday, Jan. 11, proved the difficulty of taking a long break from competition.

But on Thursday, Jan. 13, The Spartans’ won 78-73 bringing their record to 7-7 against the now 13-8 Moraine Valley Cyclones after the defeat to the Pioneers.  

The first possession of the game went to the Cyclones after the Spartans lost the jump ball. For the beginning of the first half, the Spartans had trouble putting points on the scoreboard until guard Damir Glamoc sank a two-point field goal. 

The first Spartan lead didn’t occur until the end of the first half when team captain Jordan Wilkins drained a three-pointer. By the end of the first half, the Spartans and the Cyclones were tied 32-32.                                                                                                

The Spartans came back from halftime with a three-point field goal from Glamoc which gave them the 35-32 lead. The lead extended the whole half until the game was finally won by the Spartans.

That win was motivated by their loss against Prairie State College just two days before– a loss that transformed the team’s mindset.

“The biggest thing for all of us is when you get your [butt] kicked, you need to use that as motivation to play the next game and do the same thing to your opponent,” Glamoc said.  “Since we got whooped we have to whoop our opponent now.” 

Glamoc went on to score his season high of 18 points as well as playing a strong defensive game, grabbing seven defensive rebounds. 

The top scorer of the game was Wilkins, scoring 27 points, including seven three-pointers. Guard Dorien Little put 21 points on the board, and forward Justin Henderson snagged 10 rebounds.  

According to Wilkins, one of the reasons the Spartans played so well was because they walked away from Tuesday’s loss having learned from the Pioneers’ approach. 

“The way Prairie State moved the ball was really nice,” Wilkins said. “I mean, I’m not going to say it was nice to see because we were losing from it, but that definitely showed us a little bit of what trusting your teammates can do for you and how it can change the game for us. So we definitely implemented that on Thursday against Moraine.”

Implementing that technique aided the Spartans in working better as a team during Thursday’s game. 

“Once you learn to trust the man to your right you can trust the man to your left and basically you’ll have that all around team chemistry and you know you can trust each other to do anything on the court,” Wilkins said.