OWENSBORO, KY (Courtesy of @KWCPanthers and Messenger-Inquirer) - The saying is that teams play like they practice. Kentucky Wesleyan gave that idiom some validity against Trevecca Nazarene on Saturday at the Sportscenter.
Fresh off of what Happy Osborne called a great week in practice, the Panthers led from start to finish and delivered the first-year KWC coach his 500th career victory as a head coach with an 92-65 win over the Trojans.
"We played hard," Osborne said. "We practiced hard this week. They worked really hard. You can't do all that and never let it pay off. (Ken-Jah Bosley) was incredible too. He was a monster."
Bosley led KWC (11-7, 6-1 Great Midwest Athletic Conference) with 26 points in a team-high 34 minutes. He also recorded four steals and two rebounds.
It was a complete effort for the Panthers, who held the Trojans (5-12, 2-5 G-MAC) to 42.9 percent shooting and won the rebounding battle, 33-27.
Trevecca also turned the ball over 19 times, which KWC turned into 21 points.
It was an important win for a KWC team coming off a double-digit loss at home last week to Alderson Broaddus, Bosley said.
"We were real prepared," Bosley said. "Every game — even our losses —we've played hard until the end, no matter how bad the deficit was. Against Alderson Broaddus we were just frustrated. We didn't play Kentucky Wesleyan basketball.
"This whole week we just keyed on defense. That's what prides us. We've got a lot of talent, but you're not going to win just scoring the basketball. You have to play defense as well."
A layup by Bosley gave KWC
a 22-9 lead at the 13:10 mark and the Panthers seemed to be cruising until Trevecca put together an 11-2 run to cut the lead to 29-25 with 6:39 left to play in the first half.
From there, KWC went on a quick 5-0 run and eventually led, 42-33, at halftime.
Trevecca never got it any closer than eight points in the second half and KWC eventually stretched the lead out to as many as 23 points.
"We finally sat down and guarded somebody for a change," Osborne said. "We talked about trying to get the ball out of (David) Woodward's hands a little bit. He's a good player. We recruited him at Tennessee Tech. It was no shock at how good he is."
Woodward led Trevecca with 18 points and also had five rebounds, while Byron Sanford scored 13 points. Aside from that, KWC didn't let any other Trojans go off for big numbers.
For KWC, Rico Ferguson scored 14 points and Devin Langford added 12 points and three rebounds.
Following the game, Osborne was presented with the game ball and a gift for reaching the 500-win milestone. When asked his thoughts on the achievement, he was reluctant to take much of the credit.
"Players win games. Coaches don't," he said. "I've coached a lot of great players. They're the guys who deserve it, plus I've had some really good coaching staffs. Those guys deserve a lot of credit."