Golden Eagles hold on for win
John Brown watched its 25-point lead in the second half vanish all the way down to three points on two occasions late in the second half, but the Golden Eagles had one last push against No. 24 Benedictine.
JBU finished on a 7-2 run to hold off the Ravens 75-67 on Tuesday afternoon in Bill George Arena.
“One of the best things about it is after losing the lead like that, we didn’t come apart,” said JBU coach Jason Beschta. “It kind of looked like it at times. We just didn’t finish some of the plays. There’s some things we didn’t do that were smart. I didn’t make a couple of defensive adjustments there looking back that we probably should have done. But we rallied back together. That’s the great news, we didn’t stop believing we were going to win that game. And we had some big plays down the stretch.”
After Benedictine pulled within 66-63 on a basket by Nysir Scott with a little more than four minutes left, JBU answered to get the lead back to 68-63 on two free throws from Rokas Grabliauskas.
Chris Jackson hit two free throws to get the Ravens back with in three at 68-65 with 3:56 left, but the Ravens would only score two more points on two free throws the rest of the way.
Luke Harper’s driving basket put the Golden Eagles ahead 75-65, and after turnovers by both teams and missed shots by Benedictine, Noah Taylor hit the dagger in the Ravens’ comeback.
Taylor popped open at the top of the key for a 3-pointer — his only basket of the game — for a 73-65 lead, essentially ending any hope of a Ravens comeback.
“Noah hitting that three was about as big as they come,” Beschta said. “It gave us some breathing room, and then we came up with some stops at the end.”
Benedictine got it back down to six, but the Golden Eagles set the final score with two free throws from D.J. Ellis with 37 seconds left.
John Brown opened the game on a 16-0 run, only to watch the Ravens claw back within 22-16 midway through the first half.
But the Golden Eagles closed the first half on a 27-14 run to go up 49-30 at halftime.
“There’s a lot of positives. Great start — we’ve had some great starts this year,” Beschta said. “And it’s a game of runs. If you make a great start someone’s going to make a run back. Very rarely do you get a massive lead and they don’t do something. Hopefully it won’t get that close if we ever get a lead like that again.”
JBU blazed to a 9-3 run to start the second half to build its largest lead of the game at 25.
Benedictine coach Ryan Moody pointed back to the tough start to the game, which had the Ravens behind the eight-ball.
“We’ve been pretty bad on the road, to be honest with you,” Moody. “We’ve been down 150. This isn’t our first down 15-0 climb out of a hole, you know? We have to solve that problem against good teams like this that can score the ball. We weren’t very good defensively. We didn’t make shots early. You dig yourself that big of a hole and then it got bigger at 25.
“I’m proud of our guys for digging out. We changed our game
plan a little bit, decided to get after them, pick them up a little bit full court, take them out of their comfort zone. But in the end, that first half we were sunk. We have to solve that problem. This team (JBU) is very good. We’ll hopefully see them down the road somewhere.”
The Ravens finished 19 of 50 from the field and just 4 of 23 from behind the 3-point line. Benedictine did hit 25 of 31 from the free-throw line.
Nysir Scott led Benedictine with 12 points, while
Jayden Temme, Eric Krus and Jaiden Bristol each scored 10.
After shooting 19 of 29 (65 percent) from the field in the first half, JBU only hit 4 of 18 shots total in the second half. The Golden Eagles finished 23 of 47 overall, including 8 of 22 from behind the 3-point line.
“We’ve been talking about this team just being to play with joy and being able to compete against a high level team like this today,” Beschta said. “I thought we just came into it from a better place tonight — a better mindset that we were just going to put it all out. As long as we’ve done that, we can live with it and walk away at the end.”
Luke Harper scored 12 of his game-high 18 points in the first half, while Payton Guiot had 13, including three 3-pointers. Nemanja Obradovic scored 11 points off the bench, and Densier Carnes had 10 points and six rebounds. Rokas Grabliauskas had eight points of the bench and Ellis had six points, seven assists and no turnovers.
“We needed to see D.J., these last two games he’s been very good,” Beschta said. “Seven assists, no turnovers, he made some big plays for us. We needed Rokas to see himself play well, and I thought he came in and did some really good things for us. Nemanja asserting himself inside and I love his confidence in there. He has our guys’ confidence. They wanted to keep going in there to him. All those are just little pieces that make us stronger.”
John Brown was scheduled to play an exhibition game at Missouri Southern State on Saturday. Results were not available at presstime.
The Golden Eagles now prepare to head to Texas for a two-game swing, starting Thursday at No. 9 Southwestern Assemblies of God — a national semifinalist last season. On Saturday, the Golden Eagles will head to conference newcomer North Texas-Dallas.
“We know SAGU is going to be good,” Beschta said. “I’m kind of glad we play SAGU first. Otherwise our guys might look past that other one. It is a big game and we’re going to be anxious to get back to them. They’re going to be even better now that they have Nyk Mason.”
John Brown 75, Benedictine 67
Benedictine 30 37 — 67 John Brown 49 26 — 75 Benedictine (6-3): Scott 12, Temme 11, Krus 11, Bristol 11, Jackson 7, Adese 6, Cathy 4, Belt 3, Thuston 2.
John Brown (7-2): Harper 18, Guiot 13, Obradovic 11, Carnes 10, Grabliauskas 8, Toussaint 6, Ellis 6, Taylor 3.