OGDEN — Scott Bamforth might have been tempted to toss in a 40-footer just for old times’ sake.
Bamforth scored a season-high 22-points as Weber State cruised to its largest win ever over Northern Colorado, a 79-54 victory Thursday at the Dee Events Center.
The Wildcats (8-3, 3-0 Big Sky) remain unbeaten in the Big Sky Conference; the Bears (3-8, 0-3) remain winless in Ogden in seven tries.
Bamforth hit 5 for 7 from beyond the arc at the scene of his shot from just inside the halfcourt line to beat Northern Colorado at the buzzer two seasons ago.
“My shot felt good. It’s felt good for a while, but things just haven’t (gone) down,” he said.
The senior from Albuquerque, N.M., who had scored a season-high 18 points twice, including in last game, had 17 points at halftime, hitting his first four 3-point tries and going 4 for 5 from deep in the first half.
“I feel like early in the season I was trying to kind of play perfect, try to make every single shot I took, make every right and never turn over the ball and I can’t play that way,” Bamforth said. “I’ve gotta just play free; if I mess up, I mess up. I don’t know if it goes with I’m a senior, I don’t know what it was, I was just trying to be perfect and I’m not. I’m far from perfect. When you try to be perfect, you’re not gonna be and you’re going to play worse, just like I did. Now I’m just going to play. If it’s not good enough, so be it, but I’m just going to do what I do and see what happens.”
What happened Thursday was a pretty good start; Bamforth passed Alex Fisher to move into fourth on Weber State’s all-time list for 3-pointers made with 179.
Sophomore guard Gelaun Wheelwright added 13 points off the bench while junior center Kyle Tresnak and junior point guard Jordan Richardson each added 10 to add up to four Wildcats in double figures as WSU led wire-to-wire.
“We got off to a good lead,” Tresnak said, helped by Bamforth hitting back-to-back-to-back 3s that took the Wildcats from a four-point lead to a 13-point advantage in less than a minute and a half. “Our defense really set that off. We were playing some pretty good D, making them miss shots and then our offense was just moving the ball around a lot and getting the best shot we could.”
Richardson is 9 for 14 from beyond the arc in three games of Big Sky Conference play and Tresnak went 4 for 7 from the field and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds.
Tate Unruh led Northern Colorado with 15 points. The Bears won on the glass, outrebounding the Wildcats 35-31, but lost everywhere else as they trailed by as many as 32 in the second half.
WSU coach Randy Rahe was pleased at how his players made the extra pass while dishing 17 assists, especially finding Bamforth while he was on fire.
“If we feel like he’s got it going, we’re going to run some stuff for him,” Rahe said. “He got one going in transition there. I’ll tell you what, every one of his 3s was assisted by somebody. We had guys making the extra pass. Dev Berry I think had two or three of them, where he could have had the shot and Dev turned down the shot to get (Bamforth) the shot. Scott looked real comfortable tonight.”
Weber State returns to the Dee Events Center on Saturday at 7 p.m. to face new Big Sky Conference foe North Dakota for the first time.
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