SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. - Senior
Drew Stover scored his 1,000th career point, but Millersville's road and recent offensive woes continued in a 63-52 road loss to Shepherd Saturday.
Millersville fell to 1-4 in games at Shepherd since the Rams joined the league in 2019. Keeping games low scoring is a specialty of the Rams as they lead the PSAC in scoring defense and opponent field goal percentage. The Marauders scored their fewest points since the 2023 game at Shepherd. While the Marauders entered the day ranked first in the conference in field goal percentage, they shot 42.6% and compounded that issue with 16 turnovers.
"Shepherd is a very good team, and it's tough to win in the league on the road against good teams," said Millersville head coach
Casey Stitzel. "But we are doing things on the court that make it hard to beat anyone. Our effort was tremendous. What kills you is that if we played that hard Wednesday (against Bloomsburg) we would have gotten out of the week 1-1. We missed some layups and lost the ball too often."
The Marauders trailed by just two points at the half, but for the second consecutive game, they struggled mightily to knock down shots in the first five minutes of the second half. Millersville started 1 for 7, and Shepherd stretched its lead to double-digits. Millersville crept to within 44-39 with 10:43 remaining, but Marcus Banks, who led Shepherd with 16 points, immediately hit a 3-pointer. Millersville never got as close.
Saraj Ali led Millersville with 16 points and eight rebounds, but the 6-10 Chase Parr and 6-8 Carson Poffenberger neutralized Stover, who was limited to nine points and his lowest shooting percentage of the season (4 of 11).
"They are the type of team that is hard to speed up when they play at home," said Stitzel. "They are a good team with some older guys with size. They are the one team in the conference that can match Drew's size, and we are used to throwing it into the post, getting a layup or an open shot off a double team. We could not get that today."
The loss dropped Millersville to 1-5 on the road, and it has scored 76 points or fewer in four in four consecutive road games. The team has scored at least 76 points in all eight home games, topping 90 five times.
"Right now we are self-sabotaging and in a funk offensively," said Stitzel. "The positive is that the attitudes were great today. We got some great contributions from Dante (Weise) and Tobi (Ogunbare), which will be great for us moving forward. We played pretty good Millersville defense. There were things to build on, but there are 15-20 plays where as a coach, there isn't much you can do. It's not from being selfish and it's not from being uncoachable. It's a funk."
Stover became the 43rd player in Millersville history to reach 1,000 points when he flipped in a reverse lay-up with 14:38 remaining in the second half. He is the 39th player to score all 1,000 in a Millersville uniform, and he is the eighth Stitzel pupil to reach that milestone. Stover has also done it more efficiently than any other player in Millersville history, needing just 660 field goal attempts with his 66.2 career field goal percentage.
UP NEXT
Millersville has two games remaining on its road swing. Next up is Mansfield on Jan. 15.
