The Valparaiso University men's basketball team fell 73-70 against a strong UNCW opponent that won its conference and went to the NCAA Tournament last season on Saturday afternoon at the Athletics-Recreation Center. A tightly-played game that featured eight ties and 10 lead changes saw the two teams play within four points of one another for the final 15 minutes, 55 seconds with the Seahawks ultimately prevailing. Half of Valpo's four defeats this season have come in one-possession games.
 
How It Happened

• UNCW scored the game's first six points, but the Beacons battled back to create a nine-all deadlock on a 3-pointer by Carter Hopoi (Tauranga, New Zealand) with 13:30 left in the first half. Valpo took its first lead of the game at 12-10 when Mark Brown Jr. (South Phoenix, Ariz. / Bella Vista Prep [Snow College]) swished a triple with 12:22 on the first-half clock.
• UNCW led 13-12, but Valpo embarked on an 11-0 run culminating with a 3 by Isaiah Barnes (Chicago, Ill. / Simeon Career Academy [Tulsa/Michigan]) at the 8:40 mark to give the Beacons a double-figure lead at 23-13. The lead grew to 11 a moment later when Barnes converted a traditional 3-point play.
• Freshman JT Pettigrew (Lisle, Ill. / Bolingbrook) added a 3-point play the old-fashioned way to peak the lead at 12 with 7:13 left in the first half.
• Valpo led 31-19 with 5:45 to go in the opening half, then UNCW went on a 9-0 run to shrink it to a three-point lead with three minutes to go.
• Sophomore Justus McNair (Joliet, Ill. / Joliet West) had a stretch late in the first half where he scored seven straight points on his own, widening a six-point lead to 11 at 40-29, and the lead stood at 40-31 through 20 minutes.
• Valpo led 47-39 early in the second half when UNCW hit back-to-back triples and made it a 9-0 run to transform an eight-point deficit into a one-point lead for the Seahawks. Senior Brody Whitaker (Greencastle, Ind. / Greencastle [University of Indianapolis / Marian]) stemmed the tide with a 3 to put Valpo back ahead 50-48 with 13:41 on the clock.
• The two teams were within one possession of each other from the 15:55 mark of the second half until UNCW stretched the lead to four with 2:05 to go. Pettigrew hit a go-ahead jumper with 4:21 on the clock to put Valpo up 64-63, but that would be the final lead of the day for the Beacons.
• The hosts went cold down the stretch, missing their final 10 shots of the afternoon and not making a field goal over the final 4:21. The Beacons had a tough look to tie it from 3 at the buzzer, but it was no good.

Inside the Game

• Valpo fell to 1-2 in one possession games this season as the team has a win over Eastern Illinois and losses to Marquette and UNCW all decided by exactly three points. Valpo had a seven-game winning streak in one-possession games dating back to 2023-24 before dropping each of the last two.
• This game came against a quality opponent as UNCW is now 10-1 and owns a nine-game winning streak. The Seahawks went 27-8 and went to the NCAA Tournament last season. UNCW is 106 in KenPom and 98 in NET. For context, they would be fourth in the MVC in KenPom and fifth in the MVC in NET. According to the NET, UNCW was Valpo's second most challenging opponent of the season thus far, behind only Kentucky.
• Pettigrew finished with his second double-double of the season, posting 17 points and 10 rebounds. He scored in double figures for the third straight game and sixth time this season while tallying nine or more for the fifth consecutive contest.  
• Pettigrew's 17 points marked a career high, eclipsing his previous best of 16 on Dec. 2 at Marquette. His performance on Saturday marked the first 17-point double-double by a Valpo freshman since Michael Rogers on March 1, 2008 (21 points, 12 rebounds vs. Wright State).
• Pettigrew's 17 points marked the most in a double-double by a Missouri Valley Conference freshman since the 2022-2023 season (UNI's Michael Duax).
• McNair tallied 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting, his second straight double-figure output and third of the season. He was the first Valpo player to shoot at least 85 percent with a minimum of six attempts since Lucas Scroggins went 6-for-6 on Nov. 8, 2024 vs. Concordia Ann Arbor and first against a Division-I opponent since Tyler Schmidt on Nov. 4, 2024 vs. Liberty.
• McNair had a plus-minus of +9, second on the team behind Brown's +13. Each of them played 17 minutes.
• Tupuola finished with nine rebounds, the ninth straight game he's had at least six and the eighth time in nine games he's had at least seven.
• Barnes scored in double figures for the second straight game and fifth time this season, finishing with 10 points.
• There were a combined 40 offensive rebounds in the game and a combined 38 second-chance points (including numerous tip tries by both teams that count as offensive rebounds).
• Valpo committed just six turnovers, a season best and the eighth time in 10 games that team has had 10 or fewer.
• Both teams were 2-for-2 on challenges as all four challenges plays in the game were successfully overturned. Valpo's first challenge of the day was the first in program history (this is the first season the NCAA has team challenges in place).
• Valpo incurred its first loss when leading at halftime this season, dropping to 6-1.
• This was the first time a Valpo opponent erased a double-figure deficit to win since Feb. 24, 2024 at Murray State. The 12-point UNCW rally was the largest by a Valpo opponent since Feb. 26, 2023 at Murray State, when the Racers overcame a 12-point deficit to win.

Postgame Press Conference
Click here for postgame press conference.
 
Up Next
Valpo (6-4) will close out the nonconference portion of the season on Tuesday by visiting Northwestern at 7 p.m. in Evanston, Ill. A pregame meet-up for Valpo alumni and supporters attending the game will take place starting at 5 p.m. at Bluestone Evanston. The game will air on Peacock.