The Thanksgiving holiday is a short one for the Central College men’s basketball team, as the Dutch return to the hardwood this afternoon. Central is coming off of an 86-56 throttling of Bethany Lutheran before the holiday break and will try and regain that momentum against Eureka for the second of a three-game home stand.

Dutch head coach Mike Boschee says he appreciates the opportunity to play in Pella, as more non-conference games will mean more road trips in the future for his teams.

“Traveling is part of college basketball, but it’s much nicer for the guys to just walk down the street to the gym to play, instead of planning to drive five hours down to St. Louis. But that’s part of it; our Iowa Conference is shrinking next year – we’re losing Cornell [College] – so they’re going to be more non-conference games coming up,” said Boschee.

“It’s just hard to find NCAA Division III teams that are within a two [or] three hour radius, so you’ve either got to go to Minnesota, Missouri or Illinois to find them. So it’s certainly nice to play [today] at home.”

Today’s match-up will be the first ever meeting between the Dutch and the Red Devils, which will tip off at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon at Kuyper Gymnasium on the Central College campus in Pella.