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Photos by The University News
ST. LOUIS — An energetic start allowed Saint Louis to coast to a 74-47 victory over Bowling Green Saturday night at Chaifetz Arena. The Billikens, who stumbled out of the gate Thursday night against Oral Roberts, knocked down four three-pointers in the first half—including two from sophomore Austin McBroom—to build a 29-19 lead at the break. The win improved SLU to 5-0 entering the tournament round of the Cancun Challenge.
“They did a very good job [of not looking ahead],” SLU coach Jim Crews said. “We really try to concentrate on people’s talents and their schemes and eliminate everything else… I thought our guys did a nice job of that. We didn’t get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Senior Dwayne Evans led the way with 14 points on six of 10 shooting. It was the 23rd-straight double-digit performance for the senior forward, who also added four rebounds and an assist. Tanner Lancona posted the best performance of his young career, knocking down five of seven shots, including two three pointers, as part of a 12-point performance.
“[Lancona] was really good. I tell you what got me excited more than anything else—he really snaps his passes,” Crews explained. “He got us into a good flow with how he handled his passes and dribbled the ball.”
Mike McCall Jr. also finished in double-figures for Saint Louis, who out-scored Bowling Green 45-28 in the second half.
Bowling Green was led by Spencer Parker, who netted 13 points on four of nine shooting.
While the Billikens wound up hitting just 12 of 34 shots from the field in the first half, they were running their offense and generating open looks—which they did not do against ORU.
“You’d think we’d be content with a 10-point lead at halftime given what we’ve had the last couple times, but we really didn’t think we played too well in this game in the first half at least,” Evans said. “But we came out and won the first four minutes.”
Richaun Holmes tipped in a missed layup by Anthony Henderson to pull the Falcons within eight less than a minute into the second half, but SLU responded with an 8-0 run of its own to build a 16-point lead with 16:44 remaining. The scoring spurt began when Loe stole the ball from Henderson and threw it the length of the court to McCall for an easy lay-in and was capped off with a lay-up from Evans just a few minutes later. However, the highlight came about three minutes into the half when Jett pulled in the rebound and lobbed it up to Glaze who broke free and slammed it home to force a BGSU timeout.
SLU finished the game shooting 47 percent from the field, with eight three-pointers on 17 attempts. It out-rebounded BGSU 43-32 and had assists on 25 of its 30 field goals.
Defensively, the Billikens held Bowling Green to 33 percent shooting and forced 18 turnovers.
“We have too many experienced guys to overlook games, overlook teams,” Evans said. “But now that we got this win, we’re moving on to Wisconsin.”
Saint Louis will now travel to Cancun for the tournament round of the Cancun Challenge, which begins Tuesday night against No. 12 Wisconsin at the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya. Tip-off is set for 7:30.
