On a frigid evening outdoors, the Alma College and Calvin College men's basketball teams took part in a fiery match indoors on Thursday night at Art Smith Arena. The visiting Knights outscored the Scots by four points in each half and escaped with a hard-fought 90-82 road victory.

With the loss, the Scots fell to 1-11 on the season and 0-1 in the MIAA, while the Knights improved to 9-3 in 2013-14 and 1-0 in the league.

"Tonight was a very hard fought game between two teams that came out ready to play," said Alma Head Coach Sam Hargraves. "We are all tired of being close and coming up short, but our guys played really hard and well tonight and I am proud of them. We still make some poor decisions at critical times, but we are getting there and I really believe the wins are coming.

"Saturday is a big day for us as we need to take the momentum of playing well tonight and transfer that to the court in Albion. It would be big for us to grab the road win and we are capable of doing that if we continue to improve."

The two teams came out of the gates ready to go and it proved to be a very entertaining first 20 minutes. Calvin led throughout the early minutes and had a 14-10 advantage at the 15:19 mark before Alma fought back to tie it at 16-16 with 13:01 remaining on a lay-up by So. F DJ Beckman (Shelby/Shelby).

An 8-0 Calvin run made it a 24-16 game before Alma answered with a 10-1 run of their own. At the end of the run, the Scots had their first lead of the game at 26-25 when Sr. F Isiah Law (Grand Haven/Grand Haven) knocked down a three-pointer at the 7:42 mark.

The Knights retook the lead but the Scots again fought back to lead 33-32 on a lay-up by So. G Scott Nikodemski (Rockford/Rockford) and increased their advantage to 36-32 when Beckman drained a "three" with 3:41 left in the game. However, the poised Knights closed out the first frame on an 8-0 run to take a four-point lead at 40-36 into the break.

The second half was close throughout, but Calvin was able to maintain their advantage and kept Alma at bay. It was still a three-point contest at 45-42 with 18:10 remaining in the game before the Knights went on a 12-4 run to lead 57-46 at the 14:27 mark. The Scots cut the deficit to 62-57 on a Beckman jumper with 11:39 left.

Alma made it a five-point game at 8:20 when Fr. G Chase Fairchild (Rockford/Rockford) hit a three-pointer but the Scots could never get past that threshold. Sr. G Brandon Krause (Sanford/Meridian) made it a 81-76 game with 3:14 remaining but Calvin dug down deep and was able to push away the pesky Scots and take home the 90-82 victory.

Beckman led the way for the Scots with 24 points, while Krause finished with 22. Nikodemski was next with 14 and Law and Fairchild contributed 11 and nine points respectively - the five Alma starters accounted for 80 of the team's 82 total points.

Calvin outrebounded the smaller Scots by a margin of 38 to 27 and made 30 free throws to just nine for the home team. A very crisp game saw Alma commit just eight turnovers while the Knights had only five.

Saturday afternoon sees the Scots hit the road to take on Albion College in game two of the league schedule. Tip-off is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.