Impero leads WWU men’s basketball to home win

Senior guard Kyle Impero scored a game-high 23 points to lead the Western Washington Vikings to a 101-64 victory over Simon Fraser University on Tuesday, Dec. 15, in a Great Northwest Athletic Conference men’s basketball game at Whatcom Pavilion.

The Vikings improved to 7-4 overall and are off to a 2-1 start in GNAC play. Simon Fraser drops to 1-8 overall and 0-3 in conference games. Western has won 14 of the last 15 meetings vs. the Clan.

Impero led the Vikings in scoring for the fourth time this season. After missing his first shot of the game, he was a perfect 9 for 9 from the field the rest of the way to finish with his third 20-plus point game of the season. In 11 games this season he is averaging 16.5 points per game.

Impero led three Vikings in double-digits scoring, with junior forward Jeffrey Parker scoring 22 points and sophomore guard Brett Kingma adding 19 points (five 3-pointers).

Sophomore forward Evan Scholten made his season debut after coming back from a broken bone in his right (shooting) hand to contribute three points, three rebounds and a pair of blocked shots. Senior point guard Ricardo Maxwell tallied a season high 10 assists.

Overall the Vikings shot 52.9 percent from the field, hitting a season-high 14 three-pointers. WWU had a 25-to-10 assist to turnover ratio and went 13 for 15 from the free throw line.

“I thought we brought a lot of energy to the court tonight and shared the ball well,” WWU coach Tony Dominguez said in a news release. “We stressed all week in practice to make that extra pass and extend our offense. I thought we did that tonight. I am proud of our assist-to-turnover ratio.”

Simon Fraser was led by 17 points from JJ. Pankratz and 12 points from Hidde Vos. The Clan played without two of their top players, Max Barkley (17.3 ppg) and Oshea Gairey (11.0 ppg).

This story was originally published December 15, 2015 at 10:20 PM with the headline "Impero leads WWU men’s basketball to home win."