MORAGA, Calif. -- Randy Bennett has a long list of scorers on Saint Marys, so thats the least of his worries. When his Gaels get big leads and the bench comes in, now the challenge is sustaining a defensive tempo that this group had last season in regularly holding teams to 40 percent shooting and below.Saint Marys is making strides on both ends, even gaining some good practice against a zone defense Wednesday night.Jock Landale had 15 points and 13 rebounds and the 20th-ranked Gaels jumped to a quick lead they never relinquished to beat Western Kentucky 73-51.The defense is coming along.As a team, its something we practice every day. Coach, as he said, harps on it quite a lot, Emmett Naar said. If we can just improve a bit each day, hopefully toward the end of the season well be pretty good.Evan Fitzner scored eight of his teams first 12 points as the Gaels took control from the tip. He finished with 11 points and three 3-pointers, while Naar had 14 points and six assists.Landale went 7 for 13 from the field and is shooting 65 of 99 -- 65.6 percent -- on the season for the Gaels (8-1), who used a late 13-2 run in the first half for a 38-24 lead.Justin Johnson and Que Johnson each scored 11 points to lead Western Kentucky (4-6).The one thing this team hasnt been very good at, when we get hit in the mouth or get behind were not very good in those situations, WKU coach Rick Stansbury said. We got ahead at Indiana State and played with a lead, but this was a different animal here.Bennett has challenged his team recently to play with more defensive fire, and the Gaels shut down Pancake Thomas. A graduate transfer in his first season with the Hilltoppers, Thomas shot 2 of 8 for four points and missed his three tries from 3-point range after getting a season-best 22 points in a win over Indiana State on Sunday.The Hilltoppers shot 37.5 percent and 5 of 17 from 3-point range to lose for the fifth time in six games.The last couple games weve been able to play our bench and getting those guys to get some reps and try and be as good defensively and as consistent as the first six or seven guys is a challenge. Weve got to get better, Bennett said. Sometimes we sub, we take a dip down defensively. That cant happen.Saint Marys guard Joe Rahon limped off with a right leg injury with 4:37 left before halftime then returned just before intermission and wound up matching his career high with 10 assists.In the first meeting between the programs, Saint Marys jumped to a 7-0 lead in the opening 2:27 and 12-2 then never looked back.BIG PICTUREWestern Kentucky: The Hilltoppers 24 first-half points matched their season low. ... WKU dropped to 35-97 all-time against ranked opponents and hasnt won a true road game against a Top 25 team since stunning No. 4 Kentucky on Nov. 15, 2001. ... Stansbury still needs three wins for 300 career victories. ... The Hilltoppers will have gone 29 days between home games.Saint Marys: The Hilltoppers were Saint Marys second Conference USA opponent after a win over UAB late last month. ... Top Warriors assistant Mike Brown sat courtside on an off day before Golden State hosts the Knicks on Thursday. Brown played at San Diego for 16th-year Gaels coach Bennett. He got some good seats, took care of him, Bennett said.UP NEXTWestern Kentucky: At Detroit Mercy on Saturday to conclude a stretch of seven games on the road or at neutral sites over nearly a months time covering more than 10,000 miles and hitting six states.Saint Marys: Host Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Sunday in the fourth game of a five-game home stand before the start of conference play.---More AP college basketball: www.collegebasketball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25. Discount Hornets Jerseys . LOUIS -- St. China Hornets Jerseys . LOUIS -- Attorneys for the St. http://www.cheaphornetsjerseys.us/ . -- Lou Brocks shoulder-to-shoulder collision with Bill Freehan during the 1968 World Series and Pete Roses bruising hit on Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star game could become relics of baseball history, like the dead-ball era. Cheap Nike Hornets Jerseys . Team physician Dr. Steve Traina performed the surgery Friday. Robinson was injured in a spill underneath the Nuggets basket during the first quarter of Wednesday nights loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. Cheap Womens Hornets Jerseys . "No difference at all," chirped U.S. roommate and linemate James van Riemsdyk. "Its still the same cranky Phil. Its a shame that Lewis Hamiltons actions in the closing stages of the final race of the season took some of the limelight away from the career-long achievement of Nico Rosberg. Thats not to say Hamilton did anything wrong on Sunday, but more that no-one -- including Mercedes team bosses -- should have been surprised. Hamilton simply did what he, and everybody who competes in Formula One, is paid to do: try to find every last route to victory permitted under the regulations.Yes, it was somewhat unorthodox to back his teammate into rival cars, but his driving didnt break the rules and didnt put anyone in danger. The fact that it was his teammate will no doubt ruffle a few feathers in the Mercedes hierarchy, but that is part of the wonderful dichotomy of Formula One. It is both a team sport and an individual pursuit, and if you race in it for long enough the two will clash.So obvious was the strategy of backing Rosberg into the chasing pack, that it was put to team boss Toto Wolff in his post-qualifying media session the night before the race. The answer, even then, was far from straightforward.Ive heard the comments before, Wolff said. We cant really interfere in the final race, we have let them race until now. They both know what we deem as being sportsmanlike. There is a lot at stake tomorrow, it is a drivers world championship to be won or lost.I think both will have thought about all possibilities, as long as they are not overstepping the mark in what we see as being unsportsmanlike driving we are fine. I think we need to let them go and race.We dont want to change the result tomorrow because it would be wrong for the title decider and turn everything upside down that we have developed in the last couple of years. The drivers are great sportsmen and they know what it would mean to overstep the line which would cause a lot of controversy and therefore I have trust this is going to go well tomorrow for the benefit of the team, the team spirit and the fans.Whether Hamilton was unsportsmanlike in his tactics is a matter of opinion, but there can be no doubt that Mercedes u-turned on its plan not to get involved. When technical boss Paddy Lowe backed up the instruction from Hamiltons race engineer Peter Bonnigton for car 44 to speed up, it was the teams way of attempting to take control of the situation. The pit walls race software was warning Lowe and his colleagues that Sebastian Vettels Ferrari had the pace to whip the win away from under their noses and that meant Hamiltons fun and games had to stop. As we now know, Hamilton ignored the call from the pit wall and Mercedes still finished with a one-two. But did he overstep the line in doing so?Mercedes has had no close competition in Formula One over the last three seasons, meaning its two drivers have enjoyed a head-to-head battle for the title each year. Just by observing Mercedes in the paddock it is possible to detect the strength of its team spirit, and it is that next-level teamwork that has undoubtedly been at the core of its success since 2014. Out of respect for the endless hard work going on at its bases in Brackley and Brixworth, the management expects its drivers to put the objectives of the three-pointed star ahead of their individual goals of being world champion. Whats more, Mercedes has traded off its team spirit in much of its marketing over the past three years, meaning part of the sales patter around its road cars is based on the idea of teamwork achieving success and innovation. So when a single employee ignores the will of the team on the public stage, as Hamilton did in Abu Dhabi, it inevitably creates a problem.Im in two minds, Wolff said after the race. The one half of me says we have 1,500 people in the team, 300,000 in Daimler and that create values. They respect those values and undermining the structure in public means you are putting yourself before the team. Its very simple, it is likee it is.dddddddddddd And anarchy doesnt work within any team or any company.The problem is that a racing driver like Hamilton is not like any other individual in a team. Although teamwork has been behind all his success throughout his career, his side of the job has centred around being a ruthless competitor on track. If, while in the cockpit of a racing car, he thinks about the objectives of anyone other than himself, he would cease to be the great competitor he is. It must be remembered that a Formula One team is unlike any other company in the world in that it relies on two egotistical individuals to deliver the end result. For those two individuals to operate at the best of their abilities -- and therefore realise the potential of all the people they represent -- they have to be driven by their own individual goals of world championships.Its been said that Hamiltons actions could be far more damaging in future seasons when Mercedes rivals are closer, but equally that kind of competitive spirit could be the difference between the team winning and losing a title. Ultimately, if you employ Lewis Hamilton you get both sides of the coin -- usually for the better, very occasionally for the worse.Which leads us to the question of why Mercedes delivered a team order over the public pit-to-car radio that it knew was going to be ignored? It could be that the team was na?ve in the belief Hamilton would follow it -- a theory put forward by rival team boss Christian Horner after the race; it could be that it wanted to relieve itself of any accusations of bias should Hamiltons tactics be successful and Rosberg find himself losing the championship in controversial circumstances; or it could be that it wanted to uphold the integrity of its internal rules regardless of the headlines it created after the race. Whatever the reason, it issued an order that was never going to be obeyed. Forget Catch-22, this was Catch-44.It was clear we would only interfere if our number one objective of winning the race is under threat, Wolff explained. Now, you can be philosophical whether in such a particular situation of a driver winning or losing a world championship, you need to forget about those principles that have helped us these last four years.But then on the other side does that mean only for the deciding race or does it mean straight from the beginning? Because Melbourne could be the deciding race at the beginning of the season. You could say let them off the leash and full steam ahead, provide great entertainment, fantastic headlines like we have had today I guess, but less race wins and maybe less championships. Im prepared to have the discussion. Because Im just not sure yet.Wolff later added: We could change the [internal] rules for next year because it doesnt work in those critical races. Maybe we want to give them even more freedom in racing each other.Some would see that as allowing the tail to wag the dog, but perhaps the long-term health of the team would be better served by ditching a set of internal rules that will only ever lead controversy. At three crucial flashpoints of the season -- in Spain, Austria and Abu Dhabi -- the agreement made in the calm of a meeting room in Melbourne was disregarded. There is no indication that that will change in the future, so why set yourself up to fail?Every true racer in Brackley and Brixworth must understand the thought process behind Hamiltons actions in Abu Dhabi, so isnt that enough to justify it to the rest of team? Even Rosberg played down the event, saying he could see why his teammate drove the way he did. It is, after all, a racing team and the Mercedes brand gets the best publicity when its drivers truly race one another. The bickering that comes after is what the management should seek to cut out. 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