Oklahoma Baptist coach Doug Tolin called it "disappointing." John Brown coach Jason Beschta said it was "exciting." JBU senior Max Hopfgartner called it a "relief."
In truth the game-winning play was all three in one Saturday as Hopfgartner's baseline jump shot with 0.2 seconds left gave the Golden Eagles a 78-77 win against the Bison and saved JBU from an epic, second half collapse in Bill George Arena.
John Brown 78, Oklahoma Baptist 77
Oklahoma Baptist 21 56 — 77
John Brown 49 29 — 78
Oklahoma Baptist (9-2, 1-1): Aaron Abram 21, Bryon Miller 19, Ty Allen 19, Chandler Rickey 8, D.J. Hervey 5, Cale Jackson 4, John Mosley Jr. 1.
John Brown (10-1, 2-0): D.J. Feitl 25, Griffin Brady 18, Max Hopfgartner 13, Zach English 7, Ronalds Elksnis 7, Matthew Ledford 4, Nate Anderson 3, Samson Olayemi 1.
"It's relief right now. It's relief," said Hopfgartner. "We're pretty happy right now. Obviously it wasn't our best half."
JBU (10-1, 2-0 Sooner Athletic Conference) played one of its better first halves in recent memory and raced out to a 49-21 halftime lead against the No. 12-ranked Bison (9-2, 1-1). That lead was extended to 29 points later in the second half.
Slowly, Oklahoma Baptist began to chip away at the lead, dwindling the lead to 20 points, then 10 points. With 12.7 seconds left, the Bison took a 77-76 lead on a long 3-pointer from Ty Allen.
Rather than taking an available timeout, the Golden Eagles threw the ball in and Samson Olayemi dribbled across the timeline, went to his left and then came back to his right and found Hopfgartner on the baseline. The 6-foot-9 Austrian buried the shot to regain the lead with 0.2 seconds left, and after the final time ticked off was mobbed by his teammates on the court.
"It was a decent look," Hopfgartner said. "I was getting nervous because Samson was taking forever out there. We were all just talking about it in the locker room, like Samson was just dribbling around, taking his time. I knew when he was coming toward me there was 1 or 2 seconds left, so I had to shoot it."
The shot prevented JBU from a potentially devastating conference loss just two games into the league slate.
Beschta said at the end of the day, the important stat was who had the most points, not how they got there.
"I'm excited," said Beschta, JBU's first-year coach. "I just said up there on the radio, obviously you want to play better. You want to put two halves together. At the end of the day, the final score is what matters. It doesn't matter whether we limped across the finish line because we had a really good first half and played terrible in the second half. It matters that we came out in front."
Junior guard D.J. Feitl led JBU with 25 points on 10 of 12 shooting from the field, including 3 of 5 from behind the 3-point line. Junior forward Griffin Brady hit five 3-pointers and finished with 18 points, while Hopfgartner finished with 13 points and eight rebounds. Olayemi had a career-high 11 assists.
Olayemi's decision-making in Saturday's game played a large role in Beschta not using a timeout before the final play.
"Sam had 10 assists going into that last play -- a career high," Beschta said. "I kind of trusted him to make a good decision. Fortunately it worked out for us."
The Golden Eagles hit 20 of 36 shots in the first half, including 8 of 12 from behind the 3-point line in building their big first half lead. Feitl had 16 points in the first half, while Brady had 12 and Hopfgartner 11 in the first 20 minutes, accounting for 39 of the Golden Eagles' 49 points.
Oklahoma Baptist, meanwhile, played as poorly in the first half as Tolin could remember in his tenure at OBU.
"I don't know what it was," Tolin said. "I've been here 15 years and I'm not sure I've seen anything like that either. I don't know where that came from. We really played hard and played well the last three weeks or so. We really played well Thursday night but we were not very good tonight."
At halftime, Tolin said he didn't berate his players, but simply challenged them to keep playing.
"I said, 'What are we going to do? Are we going to play or not? That's what it's going to come down to. If you guys want to take it over here, they'll be glad to give it to you,'" Tolin said. "As good as they were in the first half, they could have done that to us in the second half too. It could have been about 100-40. That would have been a bad deal. We wouldn't have even gotten the guarantee check to come over here and play. They're a group of kids that have a lot of fight and pride. That's what surprised me the first half, we've got a lot of fight and pride in us, I think, but boy we didn't in the first half."
Tolin said he was proud of the Bison's effort in the second half and disappointed they couldn't finish their comeback.
"That's disappointing to fight that hard and that long and to come back and be that close, but you've got to give John Brown credit," Tolin said. "They kept their composure there at the end when things could have unraveled on them. They got a good look."
Aaron Abram led the Bison with 21 points, while Allen and Bryon Miller each scored 19.
The Bison hit 21 of 36 shots in the second half, including 8 of 13 from behind the 3-point line.
JBU, meanwhile, still shot 50 percent in the second half, hitting 10 of 20 shots, but the Golden Eagles were nearly derailed by 14 second half turnovers.
"I thought we were going to face more pressure in the second half, and that was there for sure," Beschta said. "Our offense was still good in the second half. We shot good percentages when we did things. The problem was we had so many empty offensive possessions without shots because we turned it over 14 times in the second half. Against their pressure we didn't respond like we should have."
Said Hopfgartner, "We've got to be consistent for 40 minutes. When we were in there at halftime, we knew they were going to come back. They're a pretty good team. But we can't let them come back all the way. We turned it over way too many times in the second half. But you've got to give credit to them, too. They made a lot of hard shots."
The Golden Eagles will return to action on Saturday on the road at Philander Smith College in Little Rock.
The Golden Eagles defeated the No. 23 Panthers 83-80 on Nov. 15 at Bill George Arena. After that game, the Golden Eagles will wrap up the 2014 portion of the schedule by returning to Little Rock on Dec. 19-20 in the Philander Smith Classic, facing Campbellsville (Ky.) on Dec. 19 and Lindsey Wilson (Ky.) on Dec. 20.
"This is going to be the toughest stretch by far on paper," Beschta said. "It doesn't mean it won't get more like that in conference play. We played a Top 25 team tonight, a Top 25 team at Philander, and playing another one next weekend at their classic. Lindsey Wilson beat No. 8 the other night. This stretch could go a number of different directions for us."
JBU plays four straight road conference games at the start of the new year before returning to Bill George Arena on Jan. 22 to play Southwestern Christian (Okla.).
Sports on 12/10/2014