Eight basketball players honored last week
Randy Gispon honored as Coach of the Year for fifth time at NSU

Mike Daniels’ free throws with 3.4 seconds remaining Wednesday eliminated any hopes of an upset victory for the RiverHawks men’s basketball team over No. 16 Tarleton State at the Bruin Field House in Bartlesville.
NSU took a 64-63 lead with 9.2 seconds remaining on an Aaron Arango, San Bernardino, Calif., junior, 3-pointer, but a costly foul by Ricky Branham, Washington D.C. junior, put Daniels on the charity stripe for the 65-64 win in the quarterfinals of the Lone Star Conference Tournament.
“I thought our kids played as well as they could play and I’ll stand by this statement: they deserve to win the game,” RiverHawks coach Larry Gipson said. “Tarleton is an excellent basketball team and maybe if we’d play them 10 times they’d come out ahead, but we deserved to win the game tonight.”
The Texans, who finished the tournament with a 23-6 overall record after losing to top seed Central Oklahoma Friday, led by four with 31 seconds remaining after Eric Williams’ layup. The RiverHawks (14-14) continued battling behind Arango, who scored the last five points in the contest.
Terrence Gamble, a 6-foot-11 senior, led the Texans with a career-high 22 points, three rebounds, three steals and four blocks.
“Their size is imposing,” Gipson said. “Obviously their game plan was to go to Gamble as much as possible. That’s a reasonably difficult matchup for us but I thought we held our own.”
Arango led the RiverHawks with 16 points on 4-of-13 shooting. Mike Bontrager, Tulsa senior, added 15 points off the bench, including three crucial 3-pointers, and Steve Neal, Minneapolis senior, added 14 in their final game. Ben Rovenstine, Bartlesville junior, added six points in his return home.
“This could be my last game, so no matter how big, how strong or whatever it’s all about effort and how much you compete,” Neal said. “I was going to work harder than whoever was guarding me.”
Eric Williams added 16 points and Avery Patterson added 15 for the Texans. Defensively, the team forced 14 turnovers from the RiverHawks.
“Northeastern and Tarleton are possession teams,” Texans coach Lonn Reisman said. “That’s why possessions are so important. You got to make every possession count because they’re not going to give you an easy time offensively.”
NSU led by as many as seven in the first half and took a 33-28 lead into halftime after Arango banked a layup in while drawing a foul from Jeffrey Henfield with 0.1 seconds on the clock.
“I thought our kids played well enough to win the game,” Gipson said. “I think our kids should be the team celebrating right now.”
The loss for the RiverHawks ends a promising season in which the team made the postseason tournament for the first time since 2004. The team started slow, but finished strong with a 14-14 record and third in the LSC North Division.