SILOAM SPRINGS -- Hot shooting allowed John Brown Unversity's men's team to jump out to an early lead and never look back en route to an 84-76 victory over Evangel to open the JBU Basketball Classic on Friday.
The Golden Eagles (4-1) hit their first five field goals and never trailed against a team they defeated 95-91 at Springfield, Mo., just six days earlier. Beating the same team twice in less than a week is never easy.
MEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL
John Brown 84, Evangel 76
Evangel (0-6): Adams 20, Washington 16, Call 12, Acord 8, Lyon 7, S. Blakeslee 4, Brewington 3, Bekemeier 2, I. Blakeslee 2, Norman 2.
John Brown (4-1): Smith 17, Caudle 16, Corder 11, Toussaint 11, Bowling 9, Grabliauskas 9, Carnes 5, Rucker 4, Hart 1, Jones 1.
"It is weird when you do it that so close to your last game," said JBU coach Jason Beschta. "Shoot, it happens at the end of the season for us all the time and you just have to find a way to get it done."
They were able to hold off Evangel's late rally attempt with the aid of drawing three offensive fouls, including a pair of charges taken by Nathan Corder, down the stretch.
"Those are big," Beschta said. "I was really impressed with our ability to make plays like that on the defensive end."
Benjamin Smith and Jake Caudle combined to score JBU's first 16 points of the game and finished with 17 points and 16 points, respectively. JBU received 11 points each from Corder and Brenton Toussaint, who had a thunderous two-handed dunk off of an alley opp pass to push the lead to 29-13 midway through the first half.
Caudle, who had 38 points in the previous meeting at Evangel, headed to the bench after picking up his third foul with seven minutes, 4 seconds remaining in the first half. That forced Bechta to play several underclassmen in an attempt to fill Caudle's void.
"We kind of went young," Beschta said. "There's nothing you can do in that situation other than inserting some new guys. It's a good learning experience for those guys. They have to learn how to step off the bench and be ready to go, if that's what we need out of you."
Braden Adams led all scorers with 20 points for the Crusaders (0-6). Justin Washington, the team's leading scorer, was limited to 16 points on 5-of-15 shooting from the field before fouling out when he picked up two fouls in a 39-second stretch, the second being a charge call with Corder defending.
"We didn't make a whole lot of adjustments from the first time we played them," Beschta said. "We just wanted to do a better job on their big guy (Washington) because he's really tough. I thought we did a really good job of slowing him down, especially in the first half. We made him take some bad shots and then we fouled him out late."
Sports on 11/19/2017