WAUKESHA — Senior guard Steve Ideran, the lone history major on the Carthage men’s basketball team, was caught off guard along with his teammates Saturday. The Red Men won for the 1,000th time in the history of the program, having little trouble routing Concordia of Mequon, 85-60, in the Carroll Classic at Van Male Arena.

“I guess I don’t know my Carthage basketball history as well as I should,” said Ideran, a senior reserve guard from Batavia, Ill., who assisted on junior guard Jon Cieski’s basket that accounted for the game’s final points.

Ideran, whose father Dave played on the school’s 1975 and ’76 teams, is carrying “about a 3.9” grade point average and has been on the dean’s list five times.

“I think it speaks to the college in general,” Steve Ideran said. “To win 1,000, that’s a big number. I think it speaks to the sports program at Carthage in general, more than just the basketball program.”

The victory made Carthage, which plays Wisconsin Lutheran today at 2 p.m., 3-1 on the season and 1,000-1,106 all-time. The school began playing basketball in 1907.

Junior guard Steve Djurickovic and sophomore guard Max Cary each scored 19 points for the Red Men. Freshman forward Raul Guzman added 16 points. Freshman forward Tyler Pierce contributed 14 points and 10 rebounds for his first collegiate double-double.

Djurickovic said getting to the milestone was impressive.

“We have a lot of good history, and went to the Final Four (in 2002),” Djurickovic said. “We’re just trying to build on it from there. Get back to where we were at that time.”

The way in which the Red Men dispatched Concordia (3-2) was impressive, too, as the Falcons have a victory over Division II UW-Parkside on its ledger.

Djurickovic had five points in a 14-0 run over six minutes that gave the Red Men a 25-6 lead. Concordia closed to 33-23 with 5 minutes, 4 seconds to play in the first half. Djurickovic scored the last seven points of the half, including a 3-pointer that swished as the shot clock buzzer sounded, to put the Red Men ahead 40-23 at the break.

Freshman guard Mitch Thompson made the first of two free throws to cap a 9-0 run that gave Carthage its biggest margin, 60-28, with 14:18 left. The lead was never less than 23 the rest of the way.

“We knew they were going to come in and try to get up and down the court, which they did, and score a lot of points,” Djurickovic said. “They’re a pretty good team. They shoot the ball. If they get hot, they can hang with anyone.

“We had them early, we thought, and then all of a sudden they brought it back to a close game at half. It was a tough game.”

Concordia took almost half of its 56 field goal attempts from 3-point range ( 9 of 27).

For coach Bosko Djurickovic, the 1,000th victory is well and good, but should be kept in perspective.

“Think about this for a second; I didn’t know that I had won my 300th and 400th,” said Djurickovic said, 220-119 since coming to Carthage in 1996. “Somebody told me after games. That’s how much that means to me.

“So this is nice for Carthage. Carthage has been great for me. I love Carthage, so this is a nice little footnote about the game. But in the big picture, it’s not important because we’ve got a game to play (today). And then we’ve got a game to play Tuesday (at Indiana-Northwest in Gary), and then we’re at Hope and Calvin next weekend and that’s, to me, way more important.”