Nic Impressive In Win

Chris Harrison called it “UNLV style,” the uptempo pace that helped the Runnin’ Rebels win a national championship earlier this decade.

Todd Myles preferred to label it Arkansas’ “40 minutes of hell,” endless, suffocating baseline-to-baseline pressure.

By any name, it was entertaining.

Harrison, Myles and the rest of their North Idaho College teammates made coach Hugh Watson’s debut an impressive one, hammering Silute, of Lithuania, 91-70 in men’s exhibition basketball Thursday night at Christianson Gym.

It was exhibition of speed and quickness destroying size. Everyone seemed surprised from the outset - Silute, the fans, Watson. Everyone, that is, except NIC’s players.

“I’m shocked, to be honest with you,” said Watson, who might have gone a bit overboard with an inflated analysis of Silute earlier this week. “But we came out and got after them and the kids played well together.”

“I felt we were on the verge of breaking out like that,” said Harrison, a 6-foot-4 space eater inside who also showed a deadly perimeter touch en route to 19 points. “We’ve been conditioning very hard because we lack size. The running, gunning and trapping took a toll on them.”

“We shocked everybody,” said Myles, who snapped up seven steals and seven assists. “We’ve got to play like that - 40 minutes of hell like Arkansas.”

NIC, playing most of the night with five players between 6-0 and 6-4, caused the majority of Silute’s 26 turnovers and turned many into easy buckets.

Harrison led a first-half barrage, scoring 17 points and providing running commentary to anybody within earshot, not that the Lithuanians would have been able to understand. Once Harrison made a long jumper, ran back to the defensive end and patted himself on the back.

“He (Watson) told me to calm down a little bit (at half), everybody sees me,” Harrison said. “I get over-excited sometimes.”

No harm in that, Watson said, but he wants the energy re-directed.

“We’re so small, we’re going to have to depend on work,” said Watson, whose club played without suspended guard Shawn Myrick and had injured center Steven Ryan on the floor for only a handful of minutes. “We don’t need to waste energy on anything else.”

, DataTimes