Thursday December 6, 2012

WILLIAMSTOWN -- The milestone was not lost on Williams College men's basketball coach Mike Maker. But as deftly as members of his team can make a 3-point basket, the fifth-year Ephs head coach deflected the credit for earning his 100th victory Wednesday night.

"It's simply a reflection of having a lot of good players that are outstanding young men. It's about the program. It's not about the coach," Maker said. "I feel very privileged to be the coach here and feel a great responsibility to make sure that we put a product on the floor that everybody in Berkshire County can be proud of."

Every active Williams player got on the floor and scored as the Ephs routed Castleton State 96-52 in the second night of back-to-back games for the Ephs.

Williams trailed 8-5 with 16 minutes left in the first half, but used a 23-5 run to break the game open.

Williams is now 7-1 on the season, and Maker is 100-23 in his fifth year.

You might be hard-pressed to come up with an MVP for the Ephs on this Wednesday night. No Williams starter played more than 22 minutes, every healthy player got at least eight minutes and everyone who got on the floor scored.

Taylor Epley had a game-high 13 points, Nate Robertson had 10 and John Weinheimer came off the bench to score 10.

The win was especially impressive for the Ephs, who were playing their second game in as many days and were coming off a track-meet kind of game Tuesday at

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Curry. One might have expected the Ephs to not have as much energy. After a bit of a slow start and trailing 8-5, they made five of their next six shots to take a 15-10 lead. Castleton coach Paul Culpo -- who was a standout at St. Joseph's -- couldn't slow the Ephs down, calling two time outs during that 23-point burst. In fact, the Castleton coach had used five of his six time outs before the midpoint of the second half.

"We put a lot of focus coming into these games on mental toughness," said Robertson. "I think our team is really rallying around that point."

Castleton came into the game averaging 90 points per game. The Spartans didn't get close. It was 46-24 at halftime and the Spartans shot only 9 of 34 from the floor. For the game, they shot 24.6 percent from the floor and made only 9 of 39 shots from 3-point range.

"We've proven to be very good against teams that want to pressure us in the full court," said the Williams coach. "Our team is so different than in the previous four years, where we had more spot shooters and stretched the defense with threes. We're much more athletic. We guard much better. We finish around the rim."

Logan White, who came into the game averaging 19 points per game and led the Spartans, was held to seven.